Handwriting Helps

 Our preschoolers, ages 3 and 4, are learning to write and recognize their names. We usually print each child's name using http://www.handwritingworksheets.com/, a nifty worksheet generator that allows you to input any word/name and print off a practice sheet in the writing style of your choice. We love these but it does get costly to print them for sixteen children every day. Last year I tried to laminate them and use Expo markers to be able to re-use them, but depending on the brand of laminating pouches used, I found that wipe-off markers didn't always wipe off easily or completely. A handful of kids were so rough on their sheets that the lamination came apart after only a couple of months. And if by any chance a child wrote on his or her sheet with a Sharpie marker by accident, the sheets were ruined. Also by reusing the sheets we found we had nothing to send home to track progress. We had a small problem.

 Pinterest to the rescue! Somewhere out of the thousands of pins I've read and re-pinned, one of them had the simple but effective idea to write the child's name in plain pen or ink and allow the child to trace over the lines with a marker or highlighter. I had an assortment of highlighters in a drawer and got to thinking (dangerous, I know),  "What if the teachers wrote the name in one color of highlighter, say yellow, and allowed the child to trace over the letters in blue or pink, to make a new color?" My daughter and I spent an evening playing around with the idea and it worked great. We pick colors that we know blend to form a new color and encourage the kids to make the new color appear when tracing. It's like magic!

My daughter got in on the act with a blue and pink highlighter.

Written in blue

Adding pink....

=purple! ta da

   As long as the teacher has good handwriting and demonstrates proper letter formation to the children first, then staying on the lines is a fairly simple way to make inexpensive handwriting practice pages. You could even add a starting dot point to each letter if you find your children need that. You can let them watch you as you slowly write the original word for more practice. 

  Getting our children to write might be a little more fun when color-changing letters are involved. You could use this method to teach simple shapes, animals, and line art...any image that is easy to draw and trace over would work just fine.