Activities to Improve Toddlers' Tracing Skills

Tracing skills are a precursor to preparing a child for school-aged writing activities. Tracing a line or shape is a first step toward developing adequate fine-motor skills that will foster a toddler's successful penmanship in years to come. Arranging an inviting, doable initial tracing activity for your toddler can set her feet -- or in this case fingers -- on the road to a positive experience with the opportunity to both master and then build upon this preparatory pre-writing step.

Things You'll Need

  • Paper with simple, thick-lined shapes or lines (straight, zigzag or curvy)
  • Tape
  • Flexible waxed yarn sticks
  • Pencil with rubber pencil grip
  • Markers, crayons, paintbrush
  • Watercolor paints

Instructions

  1. Preparing for the Tracing Activity

    • 1

      Draw simple shapes or lines on paper with a black marker. Shapes can be either geometric -- like circles or triangles -- or body-based, like the simplified outline of a snowman or puppy. Lines can be straight, zigzag or curvy.

    • 2

      Tape the paper at the corners to the table where the toddler will be working. Wandering paper -- a common occurrence as your toddler roughly moves the pencil over the writing surface -- can be frustrating for him; tape stabilizes the paper.

    • 3

      Arrange the flexible waxed yarn around the outside edge of the shape.

    • 4

      Press the waxed yarn firmly in place. The yarn will serve as a three-dimensional perimeter to help guide the toddler's pencil around the shape.

    Steps to Independent Tracing

    • 5

      Place the rubber pencil grip on the pencil at a distance from the pencil tip that is comfortable for your toddler. The pencil grips ensures she's using a tripod grasp, the best finger arrangement for eventual writing.

    • 6

      Place your hand over your toddler's hand, and move your hand with hers around the shape, keeping the pencil inside the waxed yarn boundary and on top of the thick-lined shape.

    • 7

      Repeat the hand-over-hand process until your toddler understands how to trace.

    • 8

      Let your toddler trace on her own, providing corrective feedback as needed.

    • 9

      Encourage your toddler to fill in the traced shape with color -- either from crayons, markers or watercolors. Allow her to be as creative as she wishes; she may want to use more than one medium to complete her drawing.

    Expanding on Aided Tracing Skills

    • 10

      Remove the waxed yarn sticks from tracing activities as your toddler masters tracing.

    • 11

      Create more intricate drawings for him to trace by adding interior details to a drawing -- such as a simple ribbon to a square; or eyes, nose and mouth to the puppy.

    • 12

      Add a starting point and arrow to the drawing to be traced, always pointing the arrow in a clockwise direction. Actual writing activities in later years are always from left to right; providing practice opportunities that reinforce this motion will help your toddler to establish a pattern based on this bias.

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