Handwriting for Preschool

[Staceyshoe]

DD (3.5 y.o.) adores "writing" and "drawing."  She has filled up every page of multiple notebooks and hoards pencils and paper.  Now she is beginning to copy letters regularly, and I want to help her develop good habits.  (Her pencil grip is fine, but she uses poor techniques for letter formation.)  What do you recommend for a young child?  We will go very slowly, and I want to find something with fairly large letters since she's young.  HWOT?  Something else?  

TIA!  This so totally new for me.  My older children hated writing/coloring/fine motor practice when they were young.

[Susan in TX]

I would just let her be. If you correct her letter formation you run the risk of discouraging her from the activity. I doubt that she will continue with poor  letter formation when she is older.

Susan in TX

[lulalu]

HWOT is great. We used that to learn how to print. They have a youtube channel that shows the wet dry try method. We used that with the chalkboard. 

[AnneGG]

I like Print Path OT on teachers pay teachers. It’s similar to HWOT but cheaper and you have the freedom to print as many pages as you need. She starts with capitals, then numbers, and finally lowercase letters. There are add on packets you can buy if you want more variety. 
 

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/HANDWRITING-Begins-Here-Capitals-First-Explicit-Instruction-Uppercase-831529

My son also really likes the Fine Motor Journal. We use the print path OT methods, but do the fun stuff in the journal. 
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Fine-Motor-Journals-5187612?st=c68e7fd3f912309b5be2c2b5a5a92d5a

You could always work on letter formation without using any pencil to paper methods. She can practice proper formation in shaving cream, poking holes in play doh or kinetic sand, finger paint, squeeze bottles with filled with water on the sidewalk, driving cars on the floor, or French fries in ketchup. My son likes to write in glue and let it dry so it’s “3D” writing. 

[Xahm]

My oldest liked to write very young. I'm not a stickler for a particular method of letter formation (and I think some of them are very outdated and based on using fountain pens or older) but there are some methods that clearly won't work long term. I casually remarked that she was doing a good job "drawing letters" and that I'd be happy to teach her how to write them whenever she wanted. She was driven to do things properly, so she was happy to practice the right way. Having special pens or pencils that may only be used for writing rather than drawing might also help.