✏️ Playgroup · Writing & pencil control · Ages 2–3 · about 3 weeks Dates: to

Busy Fingers

Goal: Build strong hands and fingers, and make marks: scribbles, up-and-down lines and circles.

For parents: Writing starts in the hands, not with letters. Squeezing, tearing and pinching build the muscles a child needs to hold a pencil later. A fist grip is normal at this age.

Do together

  1. Dough play

    You need: A ball of play dough, or homemade dough that has been cooked

    Sit together at a table. Squeeze it, roll it into snakes, pinch it and poke holes with a finger. Stay beside your child: dough is for hands, not mouths. Avoid raw flour dough, and wash hands afterwards.

  2. Tear and stick

    You need: Old newspaper or coloured paper, a glue stick, a big sheet of paper

    Tear paper into pieces bigger than your child's palm and let them tear some too. Stick them onto a big shape you have drawn: a sun, a fish, a tree. Stay beside them and put the scraps away when you finish.

  3. Big scribbles

    You need: Chalk on the floor, or crayons on a big sheet of paper

    Make big up-and-down lines like rain, round and round like a wheel. Scribble to music: fast music, fast lines; slow music, slow lines.

Talk about it

  • Can you make rain lines? Can you make a big circle?
  • What did you draw? Tell me about it.
  • Can you squeeze the dough really hard?

Words to use

  • up
  • down
  • round
  • line
  • circle
  • squeeze

Play (optional)

Play these games free

Every game is free for every family until 20 November 2026.

Rhymes to try

Your child can…

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on one A4 page, with space to write

Tick each one when you see it, and write the date. Move on when most are ticked.

We noticed:

wasilearn.com/learn/playgroup/busy-fingers · free home learning, ages 2–7