Pre-Writing Strokes: Line Practice Before Letters

In England, one of the Early Learning Goals that children are assessed against at the end of Reception, the year most of them turn five, is about fine motor skills. According to the Department for Education’s guidance for early years providers, a child at the expected level will “hold a pencil effectively in preparation for fluent writing”, “use a range of small tools” and “begin to show accuracy and care when drawing”.

Japan’s elementary curriculum guidelines (2017) have a word for the same idea: 運筆 (unpitsu), moving the pen where you mean it to go. In the first and second grades, handwriting is to be taught in a way that leads to better unpitsu.

Before children write letters, they can practise this movement on its own by drawing lines. These are often called pre-writing strokes. In this post I write about what that practice involves, when to start, and the order I think works.

What line practice builds

Letters are made of lines. A lowercase “l” is one stroke straight down. A “c” is a curve that turns without stopping. A “v” goes down, stops, and changes direction. To write any of them, a child has to start in the right place, move in the right direction, and stop in the right place.

Line practice separates that movement from remembering what a letter looks like. When children write letters, they have to recall the shape and move their hand at the same time. With lines alone, they can put all their attention into the hand.

There is another advantage. A letter has a correct shape, but a line has room for “close enough”. It is a relaxed way to begin, for children and for parents.

When to start

There is no fixed age, but there are signs worth watching for.

Around the age of two, many children scribble, making loops and dots across the page. This comes before line practice, and at this stage I think enjoying the marks is enough.

I think line practice is easiest to start around three. Watch for a child who tries to copy a line you draw, or who tries to follow a dotted line. A fist grip is fine at this stage. I wrote about how grip develops in How to Teach Pencil Grip.

For signs that a child is ready for letters themselves, see When Do Kids Start Writing Letters?. Line practice comes earlier, so it is fine to start before a child shows interest in letters.

An order for the lines

This is the order I suggest. It moves from easy lines, to lines that change direction, to lines that go round.

1. Straight lines

Vertical lines from top to bottom, horizontal lines from left to right. Mark a start and an end, and join them. At first, draw a thick line about 10 cm long and let the child trace over it. Keeping the direction consistent pays off later, because most strokes in letters go the same way.

2. Diagonal lines

Top right to bottom left, and top left to bottom right. These are harder than vertical and horizontal lines, and children’s diagonals tend to drift towards one or the other. They show up in letters such as “x”, “k” and “w”.

3. Curves and waves

A gentle arc, then a wave of several humps. The movement is a steady change of direction without stopping. Here I look less at neatness and more at whether the child can keep going to the end.

4. Zigzags

Peaks and valleys with sharp corners. Unlike a wave, a zigzag stops at each corner and changes direction. The same stop-and-turn movement appears in “v”, “w” and “z”.

5. Circles and spirals

Closing a circle is harder than it looks, because the line has to come back to where it started. With spirals, choose a direction, inside out or outside in, and stay with it.

6. Combined shapes

A cross, a square, a triangle. Lines meet, cross, or join at corners. When a child can draw these, letters are not far away.

The order is not strict. A child who loves going round and round can start with circles. What matters, I think, is building up a few easy successes before moving to the harder lines.

Mazes and dot-to-dots count too

Mazes and dot-to-dots are line practice without a line to trace.

In a maze, the width of the path is how far the line is allowed to wander. Start with wide paths and make them narrower over time. Because the child is also thinking about where to turn, it trains the eyes and the head while the hand keeps moving.

In a dot-to-dot, the practice is stopping on the next dot. Not overshooting, not stopping short. Dot-to-dots that follow numbers are more fun once a child can read the numbers.

Both are a little harder than tracing, since there is no guide line. I would add them once straight-line tracing feels easy.

Paper and tools

Start with chunky crayons or washable markers. Anything that makes a dark line with little pressure works well. If a thin pencil only gives a faint line, children can hardly see what they drew and start pressing hard.

Use big paper. Large lines on paper bigger than A4 or US Letter are easier at first. Then make them smaller over time, moving from lines drawn with the whole arm to lines drawn with the wrist and fingers.

Draw the guides yourself. You do not need a workbook. A thick dotted line with a small circle where it starts is enough. Drawing something the child likes at the end of the line gives them a clear place to aim for.

What to look for, and when to stop

When I watch line practice, I care less about neatness than about three things.

• Does the line start where it should?
• Does it go in the right direction?
• Does it stop where it should?

Going outside the line is not worth worrying about much. If a child starts in a different place each time, or draws vertical lines from the bottom up, that is what I would check together.

A few minutes per session is plenty. Repeating the same line for pages gets boring. Three vertical lines today and two waves tomorrow is about right, and I think it is best to stop while it is still fun.

What BrainDojo Kids can do

BrainDojo Kids is an iPhone and iPad app for ages three to six. Children write on the screen with a finger or stylus to practise letters and numbers.

For line practice there is the First Lines course. It comes before letters and follows much the same order as this post: straight lines first, then diagonals, waves and spirals. The tracing direction is fixed to the natural one, left to right and top to bottom. The first four stages are free.

The training games include a maze game as well. The three daily games in Today’s Training and the four Recommended games are free each day, and every other game can be tried once.

For practice on paper, the Tracing sheets tool prints worksheets, and the first hiragana sheet is free. The direction of each line can be learned on screen, and then drawn with crayons or a pencil on paper.

In the parent settings there is a daily time limit, on by default at 10 minutes. There are no ads and no account to create. The app is free to start, and a Premium subscription (monthly or yearly) opens all courses and games.

Getting Started with BrainDojo Kids covers the first session, and Practical Tips for Using BrainDojo Kids Every Day has ideas for keeping it going.