Age 3+
Develop early pencil control skills
About this book The best time to introduce My First Handwriting Activity Book is when your child starts to take an interest in making marks. Use the illustrations below to make sure that the right pencil grip becomes a habit from the start. A poor grip very quickly becomes a hard habit to change. Children learn a lot about muscle control directly through their hands, wrists and fingers, so let your child finger-trace the various activities first. Another time round, provide 2 or 3 coloured pencils, and stay on hand to give encouragement as your child goes over the paths and lines with each colour. Little and often works best, so just do a few pages at a time. When your child finds pages 1-19 easy, try moving on to learning the correct letter strokes for a-z on the final pages. Learning the Letterland way This book will also help your child to start linking letter shapes to letter sounds – an important first skill when learning to read and spell. The trick below makes this often difficult sound/shape link easy. fff...
The Letterland Sounds Trick How to discover each letter sound The first sound you make when you START to say any Letterlander’s name is exactly the sound that letter makes in most words!
This important sound/symbol link is the main feature of two more books in this series: My First Alphabet Activity Book and My Second Alphabet Activity Book. Useful tips Throughout this book there are useful notes at the bottom of the page to help you draw attention to both sounds and shapes and to get the most out of every activity. Above all, have fun! Remember to give lots of praise and encouragement to your child as you do the activities together.
Left-hander
Right-hander
Finger tips 4cm from tip of pencil
Finger tips 2cm from tip of pencil
Let’s go to the fair!
Fing tra er cing
Finger trace along the path to help the Letterlanders get to the fair.
Encourage your child to trace the route with his or her finger to get used to going from left to right and top to bottom. Talk about the scene. There’s Harry Hat Man hurrying to the fair. Find Clever Cat in her car and Annie Apple in her apple tree.
1
Fairground food
2
Firs t sou nds
Trace along the paths in the Reading Direction.
The Letterlanders love to eat things that start with their sounds. Emphasise the sounds as your child traces each path from left to right, e.g. Clever Cat loves candyfloss. Dippy Duck loves delicious doughnuts. What might Munching Mike like?
Let terland races
Mor sou e nds
Trace along the paths in the Reading Direction.
Talk about each character as your child traces each path. Red Robot is rrracing to the finish! Will Talking Tess be talking all the time as she runs? Why is Walter Walrus waddling down, up, down, up? Encourage your child to make one continuous line.
3
Sammy’s slippery slides
4
Sou nds
Trace down the slides.
Sammy Snake and Dippy Duck love the water. Dippy loves to dive down deep in her duckpond and Sammy loves ssswimming in the sea! Encourage your child to say ‘sss…’ and ‘d…, d…’ as he or she traces the lines from top to bottom.