Star Pre-Writing Activities for Preschoolers

I cannot believe that we are already in Week 6 of our Weekly Virtual Book Club for Kids! Last week we had way too much fun with spiders. We even went tarantula hunting and we also created sparkly spider webs and a spider sticky wall.

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This week is night-themed and we are reading Time for Bed by Mem Fox. I am not a huge fan of bedtime and prefer to stay up late checking out the moon/stars and enjoying the dark! For our activities this week we are sharing three night star themed pre-writing activities to helps kids build strong finger muscles!

Kids need to build up their hand strength through fine motor skills before they start writing. Three of my favorite tools for helping kids develop hand strength are clothespins, rubber bands, and Q-tips. We're going to use all three as we have fun doing star-themed pre-writing activities.

STAR NUMBER CLIP ACTIVITY

Clothespins require a lot of strength to open and close them. In order to do our number clip activity, first kids pulled the stickers off the sticker paper (a great fine motor exercise) and then they placed stickers on the edge of the night sky black circle and on the clothepins. I wrote corresponding numbers on the circle and clothespin stars.

The goal of the activity, once it was set up, was for the kids to find the clip that matched each number and attach it to the night sky circle.

Both of my kids really had to work at it to used their fingers versus using two hands to open the clothespins. It was so neat to see how excited they got when they did it and matched the correct star with the correct spot on the circle.

This activity not only works on strengthening finger muscles, but also works on matching numbers and number recognition. You could use this idea for a variety of things, like alphabet letters, names, shapes, colors, etc.

STAR GEO BOARD

I have always loved geo boards. For this star geo board all we did was add thumb tacks/push pins to the edges of the black star, and then the kids used the rubber bands to create designs on the star and make a border. I thought the kids would get bored of this activity quickly, but they did this forever!

They moved the rubber bands around in a variety of ways and crissed and crossed across the star. They tried out different rubber bands to determine which ones were the most stretchy or the least stretchy.

Geoboards are a great way to get little fingers moving before handwriting, cutting, and other activities!

Q-TIP PAINTED STAR

Using Q-tips can help kids practice their pincer grasp. The pincer grasp is when your child pinches with her thumb and index finger. You can find more info and ideas about pincer grasp HERE.

For our Q-tip painted star activity I just encouraged the kids to decorate their stars with as many colors as they could. We made up a story while we were painting and each color represented a different thing in the night sky (monsters, aliens, shooting stars, unicorns, etc.).

The stars ended up looking so colorful and the kids really enjoyed using the Q-tips.