50 Fabulously fun ways for kids to practice their handwriting

Think handwriting practice consists of kids writing C-A-T on oversized stationery lines again and again? Think again!

From cake decorating to scratch-n-sniff kool-aid words to feather quills to invisible ink, there are oodles of ways to make handwriting a treat for kids.

Here are 50 fun ways kids can practice their printing and cursive handwriting skills.

With frosting in a pastry bag onto a cake or cookies
With broken crayons or golf pencils (the short size helps them use the proper grasp)
With fingers in coffee grounds on a cookie sheet
With a stick in the sand
With a stick in the snow
With a paintbrush and water on a cardboard box
With wet and dry chalk on a chalkboard
With fingers onto a dirty car before washing it
With a gloved hand onto a dusty surface before dusting it
With dry-erase pens on ruled paper framed in a picture frame (wipe off and write words and sentences again and again)
With calligraphy pens
With fingers on tempera paint sealed in a baggie
With cooked spaghetti to form letters
With yarn and glue to spell out words on a piece of cardboard
With paint and a paintbrush
With a Q-tip on paint spread on tin foil (smooth the paint with a wide brush to start over)
On a painting app
With a squirt gun on the driveway
With chalk on a chalkboard paint-covered door or piece of furniture
With the end of a paintbrush on a frosty window
With bathtub paint and a paintbrush on the bathtub wall
With a squirt bottle filled with colored water onto a snowbank
With Wiki Stix
With a finger or paintbrush in shaving cream
With paint pens on smooth rocks to make mix-and-match words
With playdough “snakes”
With quill feathers dipped in ink or liquid watercolor paint
With paintbrush and mud on the sidewalk
With markers on a paper-covered door
With chocolate syrup onto ice cream
With kool-aid powder mixed with just a bit of water to make scratch-n-sniff words
With mashed potatoes piped out of a pastry bag at supper time
With crayons onto heated tiles (warm them in the microwave until they’re hot and caution children not to burn themselves)
With a gloved finger on a snow-covered car
With markers on snow packed into cake pans and brought inside
With the end of a paintbrush into styrofoam (then make paint prints of the carved words afterwards)
With blo-pens
With ketchup onto a plate at lunch time
With pipe cleaners
With washable markers on a plain t-shirt or nightgown (just wash to start over)
With fingers on a flour-dusted tray
With glue bottles (cover the glue words with glitter after forming)
With washable window markers on the car window
With fabric paint onto old t-shirts
With dry-erase markers on fun papers put into sheet protectors
With a magna-doodle
With a ballpoint pen into bars of soap (we save hotel soap for carving fun)
With icicles onto construction paper
With paint pens onto wood shapes for ornaments
With lemon juice for invisible ink (warm the paper over a toaster or light bulb to make the words show up afterwards)

That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to making handwriting fun.

Also stock up on fun writing tools, tiny notebooks, fancy pens and lots of kinds of papers and surfaces to keep it interesting.

Lastly, keep in mind that even without the forced writing, kids will learn to write well by the time they grow up — especially if you stock the house with fun writing supplies. Case in point, our oldest child’s doodles from last year…