Hand strength is an important aspect of being able to learn to write successfully. Hand strength plays a significant role in children's ability to hold or grasp writing utensils such as pencils, crayons and chalk. A comprehensive writing center includes materials that support developing hand strength, such as bottles and jars with caps that screw on and off and pull off, blocks that fit together snugly, balls of differing flexibility for squeezing, dough or clay for molding and squeezing, paper for tearing and ripping and clothespins and other fasteners that require grasping and squeezing to operate.
Manual dexterity or fine motor skills require eye, hand and finger coordination. A writing center that has materials and activities that encourage fine motor manual dexterity. Such items include bead-stringing toys with beads ranging from large to small and strings of various widths, cereal and macaroni for stringing, a variety of puzzles with large to small pieces, crayons, markers, pencils and sewing cards. Your writing center should also include toys that have snaps, zippers and buttons; shape sorting and nesting toys; banks with coins; and peg boards with pegs and holes ranging from large to small.
Preschool children who lack appropriate strong trunk control have difficulty learning to write. Sitting up straight and holding the head in the appropriate position affects the ability to learn write efficiently. If a child rests her head in her hands or leans her body or arms on the table while writing, she may have inadequate trunk strength and control and would benefit from trunk strengthen activities. Trunk strengthening activities for a writing center include having a space for trunk exercises, such as sitting with a student's hands behind him on the seat of a chair or on the floor and lifting his bottom off the seat or floor. You can also have preschoolers do the bear walk by using hands and feet to walk across the center, lie on their tummies while coloring, draw or do puzzles.