Helping your child with writing

At the moment in Junior Infants, we are focusing on learning to write specific patterns which will help us when we begin to start forming the cursive letters after Christmas. These can be difficult for the children as they are also trying to focus on their pencil grip and strength. As parents, any help you can give the children at home is invaluable. The more familiar they become with the pencils and patterns, the more confident they become! Please see below for some fun ways to practise patterns/writing at home. We believe in writing being a positive experience, so while the children may need some guidance to do the right pattern we believe in lots of praise and encouragement of their attempts and progress. Don't worry if your child is having difficulty, any mark making is a step in the right direction. Also, use a range of tools; pencils, crayons, twistables, colouring pencils, markers (if you are brave). You can use scrap paper, envelopes etc, also whiteboards are very useful and are available in Mr. Price/€2 shop.

Make cards! With Christmas coming up, encourage the children to make their own Christmas cards, using their patterns to decorate the cards and envelopes.
Again with Christmas coming up, ask the children to make a list (pictures) of some things you might need for Christmas dinner/presents.
Tell the children you want to guess what story they have been reading in school this week and that you want them to draw you some clues.
Any pictures the children draw, ask them to make you a frame around the picture using some of the patterns we have been learning.
They can use play-doh to make the different patterns, trace the patterns in sand, use chalk to write their patterns on the outside walls/ground.
Rolls of butcher paper(available in Ikea) or old rolls of wallpaper are ideal for painting patterns.
Draw patterns on strips of paper and cut to put together and make paper chains to decorate the house for Christmas.