I may be a little premature in beginning my teachings for Mai on tracing her name, but as of lately she has taken a lot of interest in tracing activities. There is a tracing lesson on her Nabi Tablet. It features a train cart on alphabet shaped railroad tracks. She loves this activity & though it is still difficult for her to trace perhaps with a pencil, she easily maneuvers the cars on the track.
This gave me the idea for the first tracing lesson. .. Tracing with a matchbox car. I just drew a letter road using a crayon. I showed Mai how to drive the car along the letter. She did this activity for a few minutes with mommy & did actually drive along the road in a tracing motion while saying “Tracing, trace the letter”
Tracing With Cars
Tracing with Sugar & Food Coloring
Using glue make an outline of a letter & let dry.
Once dry, fill the inside of the letter in using a light layer of glue. Pour sugar over the glue & shake until glue is covered with sugar & dump excess.
Pour a few drops of food coloring in a clean container & add a little water.
Using Qtips, trace the letter using the food coloring. The combination of the sugar & food coloring create a nice & shimmery effect,
Mai liked this one. I have a kitchen island filled with letter paintings.
DIY Dry Erase Tracing
Draw a letter on a piece of construction paper.
Make hash marks on the inside of the letter being traced & cover the letter with Scotch tape.
Trace the letter using crayon.
Erase with a napkin & trace again.
This one she did not want to do. She did want mommy to do it though. She made me retrace it a few times.
Now that we have learned to trace all the letters of our name. We decide to have a little more fun with the sugar painting.
Using glue draw out the outline of your design, same as above. Let it dry completely. After it dries color in with a thin layer of glue & pour sugar immediately over the top. Shake until the sugar covers the glue & dump excess sugar.
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Very cute! My older daughter know how to write her name now with capitals and lowercase, too. My younger has been using one of the iPad apps with me to help her in writing it now. She knows how to spell her name by sight so far, but definitely love that these activities you did reinforce them being able to learn how to trace and eventually write their names, too 🙂
Those apps are great and Mai does great with them, so I thought maybe she would be ready to do some on paper. She loves watching me trace and we trace hands a lot. We will keep practicing. 🙂
This is super cute! I definitely want to try this with my two-year-old, though I’m not sure how quickly he’ll pick it up! haha Should be fun anyways! 🙂
My daughter did the car one, did not even attempt tracing on the dry erase and just enjoyed the painting side of the last activity, not really tracing it at all. She is only 2 as well but sometimes she seems like she is ready for so much more, so we experiment. They will get there when they are ready. It is so fun watching the journey.
Great ideas. Willow would love this. SHe loves anything she can get her hands into.
Same with my daughter. She wants to do everything.
My daughter can read and write already; however these are very fun ways for her to get creative with different designs and patterns. Thank you for sharing!
That’s great. When did your daughter start reading? I am always curious as to when I should expect these milestones. We still have a while for the reading and writing but we can still practice & have fun with it.
That looks really fun, my preschooler is working on her letters as we speak so I would love to try these. 🙂
Great! I hope she has fun with these & I hope mommy does too.
This is so cute! I will save your ideas to use in my class!
Thanks Claudia. 🙂
My girls will love this!
How fun! Tracing is a great way to teach them!