It’s Day 1 of our 30 Days of Reading Fun for Beginning Readers series…and it is also a holiday weekend, so we are having a little fun with this first activity. This Pushpin Letters activity is great for promoting fine motor skills as well as teaching children to hold a writing instrument correctly. Although our series is on reading, pairing reading and writing together is always beneficial as the two go hand-in-hand.

Big Brother (now 11) practiced making Pushpin Numbers back when he was in preschool and it was an activity he often wanted to repeat (probably because I would never let them play with pushpins otherwise). Obviously, this activity is only appropriate for kids 5 and older…and still will require constant supervision.

The materials you will need are:

-A small corkboard

-A few pushpins

-Letters written on a piece of paper

Write your letters on a piece of paper and then place it on top of the corkboard. You can secure it by adding pushpins to each corner.

Let your child start poking holes in the lines, preferably forming the letters correctly (top to bottom).

Once you are done, hold the paper up to the light to see the letters, or use a light table or overhead projector.