Pre-writing skills board activity

It’s been sometime since I took out the homemade pre-writing skills boards. So about 3-4 weeks ago, I decided to take them out. The countdown to his assessment date has started, so I’m a lot more motivated to work with him.

I still didn't see much progress in him using the pre-writing skills board. He still didn't rest the base of his palm on the paper. He still couldn't control the speed of drawing - he zoomed from the bottom to the top, then zoomed back down, then zoomed up again etc. His left hand wasn't holding down the board etc.

I usually try to make his activities (work) more fun, so after tracing the shapes or patterns out, I transform it to something funny. It’s important to make it interesting cos he needs so much more fine motor practice compared to a normal child.

The blue triangle represents the mountains that can be seen from his room. He chose blue because most of the time, it is a greyish shade of blue rather than green (pollution!). He chose to colour the sky grey because it IS usually grey. He still needs a lot of work in the fine motor area, so I my hand was over his, moving it to colour, draw lines etc.

The “squarish U-shapes” were made into buildings that can be seen from his room. I helped him use the ruler for the criss-cross lines. I drew the vehicles because by that time, he was tired (he was still weak from his bout of recent illnesses). I gave him the choice of what he wanted drawn.

This is still displayed in his room, but I may remove (relocate?) it soon.

I couldn’t think of what to transform that spirally-thingy into, so I made patterns with it instead. I wanted a contrast so held his hand to make the “W” shaped pattern.

Then I thought of introducing the concept of skip counting and pattern (maths skills) by putting in dots in alternating colours.

Since all this was done on the spur of the moment, I didn’t foresee the pattern getting messy as we worked towards the centre of the spirally-thingy!