Ep #102: Is Handwriting Still Necessary? With Dr. Christina Bretz

How do we help kids with handwriting? And do they even need to know how to use handwriting in this digital age where everyone’s on an iPad? My conversation today is absolutely packed with a-ha moments, so good, so functional, simple tips that you can use around teaching your children handwriting.

My guest today, Dr. Christina Bretz, is an amazing resource for you. She is the senior professional learning manager at Learning Without Tears, where she spent 23 years using a multisensory approach to teach handwriting. She’s also worked as a school-based occupational therapist, home health, and a business owner, and she’s a professor at Eastern Kentucky University.

We packed a lot of stuff into this 30-minute conversation, but we talked about, do kids still even need to learn handwriting? And we talked about the difference between typing and actually writing and what’s happening in your brain, what the brain scans show is going on during those different things. Super fascinating; you’ll want to hear that. And then she talks about the four strokes. These four strokes that we teach kids before we actually start teaching them to write. She talks about the value of vertical writing. That one’s really fun. Get your easels out or hang a paper on the wall. Oh my goodness, so fun.

And then she talks about the sequence of teaching letters and the method she uses for that, including using lowercase letters—like letters that have the same lowercase and capital letter forms—and then her strategy with Magic C and how you learn C and then turn that into other cool letters using some fun, child-friendly language. You’re going to love this conversation. It’s coming up right after this.

Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast, where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow, and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves, because, you know what? We all really need and deserve that, too. I am your host, Amy Nielson, let’s get ready to start the show.

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Amy: Dr. Christina Bretz, I am so excited to have you on today. Welcome to the show.

Christina: Thank you so much for having me, Amy. I’m so excited to be here.

Amy: This is going to be amazing. And we’re going to talk about handwriting, which is interesting because I think I see videos all the time on Instagram and everywhere of, “Oh my gosh, my child’s not holding their pencil correctly,” or “They should be doing it like this,” or… So I have a kid—we’ll just go there. I have a kid who does just amazing in school. He’s brilliant, and his handwriting’s terrible. Okay, I admitted it online. All right, so let’s talk, and I just love him; he’s the best, but his handwriting struggles.

So I’m excited to have this conversation with you, and you can help tell me all the things. It’ll be so good. So, before we get into it, just tell me a little bit about your background. How did you become an expert and specialist in handwriting? And we’ll start there, and then we’ll find out what to do and what to watch for and all that good stuff.

Christina: Sounds good. Yes, so I guess I started as an occupational therapist in the school systems. And when I was in the school system, I started to see that I had, at the time, I had 90 kids on my caseload. And out of that 90, I would say probably 75 had difficulty with handwriting and other things as well. So, I started talking to the teachers in the different schools and asked them, “What are you doing to teach handwriting?” And every classroom was a different answer.

Either, “Oh, I’m not teaching it,” or “They should come in and already know it.” And that was from a kindergarten teacher. So I thought that was really interesting because, you know, that’s where we should be teaching it. And yes. So, but everyone had a different answer to that. And so another occupational therapist and I decided that we were going to go and do a district-wide training with all of the teachers on the program Handwriting Without Tears just so that we would have consistency, and we saw that it worked with kids.

And so we started there, and then I started working for Handwriting Without Tears, not too much after that. And because I fell in love with the program. I saw how it worked for children, you know, and just wanted to do more with it. And so 24 years later, still with them and have enjoyed every minute of it because I really am very passionate about helping teachers teach handwriting to kids.

Amy: Yeah. So that is so interesting because I think, and we have different reading programs, and we have different things of a lot of things, but I feel like handwriting isn’t one I hear about a lot. They get like, you know, their worksheets or whatever, but I don’t – so this is kind of big. Talk to me about like, why is it important? Like, does handwriting still matter in our digital age? Like maybe walk me through that for a minute.

Christina: That’s such a great question, Amy, because that is a question I get probably on a daily basis, or at least weekly basis, is, well, why should we teach handwriting in this age of technology, right? Yeah. And we’re now seeing the research that’s out there that shows us that handwriting is really a great place to help children recall information. And it is also, and so when we think about it, like when we write our grocery lists, it helps us to remember and to recall that information.

So it really is activating the brain, and it’s actually activating those reading circuits in the brain. We’re now seeing a lot of states are putting this into their state standards of having cursive in their state standards as well as handwriting. So, you know, I think a lot of people are seeing the importance of it. And just in my personal experience with handwriting, I would see kids with low self-esteem. Once they were able to understand how to write, their esteem, their self-esteem would improve because it’s that way to communicate with others, you know? And so we still need it. It’s something that we see that when children are able to write, their academic scores improve in other academic areas.

Amy: Oh, such a good answer. I love it. Because I thought of a couple of those things, but then you kind of opened my mind to more. So, oh my goodness with memory. For sure, it works totally different, the connections it uses in our brain, right? And I focus a lot on teaching kids to read and that writing-reading connection at the same time, doing those simultaneously to help teach kids like their phonics and get that practice and become expert readers. We’re getting them writing. So yes, that’s so important. And then you’re talking about like confidence.

And I was thinking, I get in my like outside of work life, I get to work with a community of women around in my neighborhood, and I teach classes sometimes. So I’m getting up there and I’m like writing on the board, and I’m like instantly self-conscious, right? Do I have to write? Or we get in like these like groups, I’ll go to conferences around the country or whatever, right, for work. And everyone’s like, “Oh, you take notes. Like you should take the notes. Who has good handwriting?” And all of us are like, “Not me.” Right?

So that I thought was kind of a funny. But I think, yeah, the connection of just typing on a computer feels totally different than like writing it out. Like you’re just using a different, I think, part of your brain to do that, and that would improve memory.

Christina: Exactly. And there’s actually study, research shows that there are MRI studies that show the brain when writing compared to the brain when typing. And there’s more circuits and synapses that are firing when writing. So it’s just there’s so much, and I’m not saying that we should just be writing and not typing because both, we need to have a balance of both in the classroom. And it needs to be taught, you know, both of these life skills need to be taught, and both are life skills.

Amy: Yes. I love that. Yes, and I 100% agree with you, but it just, you know, even my son, right, who wants to be a computer programmer when he grows up and is like, “But do I really need to learn how to write?” you know, like, and he can, right? It’s just when he tries too. It’s like, you know, there’s a difference when you’re like really trying and not trying. Anyway, it just is not an emphasis. But this is so good. Now I can be come back to him and say, “But guess what I learned.” Yes. I love it.

Christina: Exactly.

Amy: Okay, let’s talk about because fine motor becomes like a really big conversation too and the importance of fine motor skills. So, talk to me about like maybe brief for listeners that don’t know about fine motor skills, why they matter. Like brief intro to fine motor skills and then how maybe handwriting and learning handwriting plays into that piece.


Christina: Oh, definitely. So when we think about fine motor skills, we’re thinking about using our hands and being able to manipulate small objects. So, like you were talking earlier, Amy, of picking up a pencil. You know, that’s something that there’s research that shows 50% of 3-year-olds have the fine motor ability to hold a crayon correctly. That’s when we need to be teaching this. A pencil grip doesn’t naturally develop. It has to be taught.

And so you know, if the child is watching the teacher or their parent, and they have a different grip, and that’s what they’re looking at, they may start demonstrating that grip, right? So we need to at that young age at like 3 and 4 when they’re in preschool, we need to be teaching them how to hold that crayon correctly. And so those different foundational tasks that we have that we’re using those fine motor skills, like I said, with holding a pencil, with being able to color with your, you know, with your crayon, being able to, you know, button, like being able to zip up a coat. Those are all things that we’re looking at when we’re looking at those fine motor skills.

And I think when we think about our fine motor skills and thinking about how it’s so crucial now, I think, as compared to years ago, because of the development of the iPad. Because when the iPad came out, you know, we saw a lot of finger swiping, right? And we saw a lot of just like pressing the button with our pointer finger instead of children using both hands and manipulating objects and being able to open things and close things and using both hands at play. And it really started to decrease those fine motor skills because children were using devices more than they were using objects to play.

Amy: Interesting. Okay, so like, you know, I think one of the traditional ones I think of as far as like pencil grip or crayon grip, right, is like the fist, right? And they’ve got the crayon in the fist and they’re coloring, scribbling, right? That isn’t something that probably they’re seeing parents do. Is that kind of just a natural part of the development of getting to handwriting?

Christina: Yeah, so that’s really more of an immature grasp. And as children start to age and grow, they start to develop more of a precise grasp. And there’s really two grips that are appropriate. So, like the what we call the tripod or the quadrupod are the two grips. So having their thumb bent and their pointer finger pointing to that tip of the pencil, and then the crayon or that pencil is resting on their middle finger. That’s the tripod. And then the quadrupod is bringing the middle finger up on the pencil.

So those two grips are really the appropriate grips for children. And what I love to do is doing songs with kids to help them because we know children respond so positively to music. So we do a lot of music when I’m working with kids and just having that, having them understand how to pick up their crayon, and then we’ll drop it and pick it up again and thinking about that when you’re having them drop it, that’s fun for them. You know, they love to drop things. So when you say, “Oh, drop it.” Now they’re dropping it and then we’re going to pick it up again, and they’re getting that motoric patterning of where their finger should be on that crayon or that pencil and then dropping it and doing it again. So having that repetition too is really key.

Amy: I love it. Are there other activities? Because, you know, a lot of our preschool teachers, right, are doing activities around that, right? And I love to kind of do other activities that are all kind of like supporting each other and stacking skills, right? So are there other kinds of activities that teachers could be doing, say with like sensory bins or, you know, tongs or I mean, that might be kind of more hand strengthening exercise, but different things like that. Are some of those helpful and supportive of children in kind of that pre-writing stage?

Christina: Oh, definitely. Because those are all those foundational skills that are helping them with that emergent writing. So when we think about the sensory bins are great, an easel is one that, you know, most pre-K classrooms have easels. And easels are great because it’s putting that paper on a vertical surface. So when they have that paper on the vertical surface and they’re coloring or they’re drawing, it actually helps to promote the wrist in a neutral position, which actually will help to facilitate their writing, will help to facilitate the grip too. So having that vertical surface is huge.

And you know, we’ve had, you know, I’ve been in pre-K classrooms where we’ll tape it on, you know, tape a piece of paper on the door and have them color and then they’re feeling different textures and getting that feedback into the hands too when they’re doing that as well. So easels are great, sensory bins are wonderful, tongs, like you said, are great, and we actually have one of my favorites, and I was called in the preschool classrooms, I was called the tag bag lady because we have this product called tag bags, and they’re little bags that have different fine motor, different fasteners on them. And so kids can button, and they can zip, and they can velcro. And those kind of things, just incorporating those throughout the day can really be beneficial for their fine motor skills.

Amy: And all of that like helps with them developing their ability to write and do handwriting well.

Christina: Exactly. And then we’re going to teach them strokes first. You know, we really want to, before we even get into letters, we want to teach them positions. We want to teach them where is the top and where’s the middle and where’s the bottom. When we think about that, we think, oh, that sounds so easy. But that’s something that has to be taught. They need to know where the top, middle, and bottom is, right?

So that they know when they’re writing a capital E, where’s the top of that capital E and the middle and the bottom? Those kind of things are going to be beneficial too. So we’re going to start out with just working on strokes and working on those fine motor skills through having them understand it through wood pieces. So really being hands-on of understanding what a big line is compared to a little line and what a big curve is compared to a little curve. And those four strokes will make all the capital letters of the alphabet.

Amy: Oh, I love that. So big line, little line, and big curve, little curve.

Christina: Little curve. Yes.

Amy: Oh, that is so good. Okay, so I’m just thinking as you’re talking. My brain is, you know, blowing up. This is so good. So, I’ve worked with this cute kiddo recently that struggles with doing building her letters in the proper, you know, order. So she’ll start at the bottom and go to the top or kind of start backwards with. Okay, so when you’re starting from the bottom, when you’re, you know, maybe doing your lowercase D, right? Or you’re kind of reversing what’s, you know, the proper order of things. Is that a problem? Is this something we want to correct? Do we not worry about it and why?

Christina: And it is something we want to correct because we want children to understand where the top is. So one of the things that you can do with that is I like to teach the, we like to teach the capitals first, and then all capital letters first, and then lowercase. And the reason for that is because all capital letters start at the top. And they all occupy that same vertical space. So they’re all the same height, right?

Now, when you think about lowercase letters, you have some lowercase letters that are small, like the lowercase A. And then you have some that are tall, like the B. And then you have some that are descending, like the G. So you have three different positions there. So we’re going to get to those later. We’re going to teach our little ones first, we’re going to teach them all the capital letters first. And visually, you could, you know, put a little smiley face up at the top or the girl that you’re working with and say, “Okay, this is the top.” Give them that visual cue.

Even putting a dot and say, “We’re going to start here with our letter.” And then when you’re ready, then we transition into those lowercase letters. And we’re going to use the same terminology that we’ve used with our capitals. And we’re going to say like, for instance, for a D, we’re going to make that as a C. We’re going to make it as a magic C, up like a helicopter, back down, and bump. And so it’s very child-friendly language that we want to use with kids so that they can understand that.

And then we’re going to teach the B and D are big reversals, right? That lowercase B and D. So we’re going to teach the D as a C letter, and then it magically becomes a D. And then we’re going to teach the B as a diver letter. It’s going to start at the top and dive down and then swim up and over and around and make that curve. So, you know, having two different starting places can be really beneficial too for children to help them prevent that reversals of letters.

Amy: Oh, I love that so much. Yeah, it just takes it into a different place. That’s so interesting. Okay, so when you see kind of these graphics of the different lines and shapes and things that we then use to take and create all of our letters with, right? Are there other ones that you have kids practice kind of pre-writing besides the big line, little line, big curve, little curve? Or are those just kind of the four you do?

Christina: Those are the four we do. And then we’re going to teach, then we’re going to put the shapes in there. We’re going to teach them shapes with, you know, teaching a square and a circle and a triangle. And then we’re going to be teaching numbers too, you know? And that’s why I think what I like is when we think about ways that we’re going to be teaching children, we really want to have that school-to-home connection too, because we know that parents are key to this, right?

So if we can give them tips, and I used to run a handwriting camp for a couple years. And in that handwriting camp, I, my first year, I gave them so many tips. I was like, “Oh, do this and do this.” And those parents were so overwhelmed. You know, and I was brand new. I thought, “Oh, this is going to be great.” And I got the feedback from them and they were like, “Woo, that was a lot.”

So then I knew, okay, I need to tailor this down a little bit. So by just giving them simple tips, you know, make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and make it into a triangle. And then have children count the number of corners on a triangle, the number of sides on the triangle. And then let’s talk about that number three. And it’s a little curve, little curve. That’s how you make a number three. You know, so bringing that terminology back in and making it hands-on is really going to be so beneficial for our young children.

Amy: I love this so much. Oh, this is so fun. Okay, I have to tell you. My nieces got me really into Korean dramas, like it’s like Korean television or whatever. So then I started teaching myself Korean, and they also have an alphabet. Looks totally different than ours. And it blew my mind. Like I had to rethink my entire like how I learn to write and read and everything because it’s so fascinating because it is Yes. It’s just lines and curves. And then you put it all together.

So I love how you’re breaking it down into all of these letters, the numbers, all these things we’re writing. They’re lines and curves. And then we just put them together. So it’s almost like puzzle pieces and we can just say, but okay, so this got my brain going. And then I’m thinking, okay, I can think through all these different letters and how you do them. How do you do something like a lowercase letter R or a lowercase letter N where it’s maybe a little bit different. Like with an R, we’re not doing like a full curve or something like that. So what does that look like?

Christina: So with the wood pieces in the big line, little line, big curve, little curve, we’re going to use those for our capital letters. Okay. And then for the lowercase letters, we’re going to teach with our child-friendly language. So like an R is taught as they dive down and swim up and over. So we have our lowercase letters are grouped into similar starts and strokes. So we have like the first grouping of lowercase letters that children learn are c o s v w. Well, why would they learn those? It’s because it’s just like their capitals. They’re just making them smaller. You know, if they can make a capital C, they can make a lowercase C.

And then the next group of lowercase letters are called magic C letters because we’re going to start out as a C stroke, and then we make it, we turn it into an A. We start out as a C stroke and we turn it into a D, and then the next one would be a G. So that’s that grouping of letters. So we’ve grouped them into these letters and we’re building off the letters that they’ve learned previously.

So like if they’ve learned that C, then we’re going to take that and now we’re going to make it, turn it into an A. And they’ve already made that, you know, that foundation of that C, and then they’re going to make that little line. So it really is a way to, it’s really developmentally appropriate and it’s progressing in that developmental progression.

Amy: I love it. Oh, it makes so much sense. I love things that make sense. I think you do too.

Christina: Exactly. It’s one of those things where you go, “Oh, why didn’t I think of this? This makes so much sense.” You know?

Amy: Fabulous. Okay, so let me ask you this question. Because a lot of our listeners are parents and we have kids and we’re like, okay, how do I know if this is like a problem? For example, my kiddo when he was in elementary school would come home with his report card, you know, and in our schools, they have like a 1 to 4 or whatever, and he’d have fours on everything. And then we get to handwriting and it’d be like, not a four. And we’re like, okay, how much do I need to worry about this? So, like, what do I need to watch for? When do I need to worry? I’m just kind of thinking like those kinds of questions.

Christina: That’s a great question. I think one of the things first off to look at is, are they teaching handwriting in the classrooms? Because I have my own tutoring business, and when I get children that, you know, parents reach out to me, and when they reach out to me and they say, “My child’s having difficulty with handwriting. I can’t read anything they’re writing in school.” And I’ll say, “Well, what are they teaching? Can I talk to the teacher?” Yes. So when I talk to the teacher, the first question I’ll ask is, “What program are you teaching for handwriting?”

And a lot of times it’s like, “Well, I’m not.” So then it just becomes a, let me teach you. I’ll teach the parents and I’m teaching the child how to write because they’ve never been taught. Other things to look at is if the teacher sees some concerns in the classroom with handwriting, if there’s any standardized testing that they have that they’re using, but usually an occupational therapist would come in to look at the child if that’s something that the teacher wants evaluated.

On the Learning Without Tears website, we have a free screener. And parents could use it, teachers can use it, to just be able to see, it’s just looks at a small sampling of letters, but they’re able to see, are they reversing letters? Are they, do they remember those letters? Are they putting those letters on the line? How’s their sentence skills looking? So those kind of things can really be beneficial for the educator to be able to see, you know, how the children in the class are doing.

Amy: And I’m thinking from what I know about how our brains work, right, that the more that a child masters like understanding how to build a letter, that’s going to help their memory and retention as far as knowing the name of that letter and learning the sound of that letter and being able to functionally use it in building and deconstructing words, right, through decoding and writing all of that.

Christina: Yeah, all the decoding, encoding, that we’re going to see that through – that’s why when we talk about handwriting, it’s not just handwriting. It really is part of literacy. Because, you know, we’re working on reading and spelling and all of that with children when we’re working on handwriting.

Amy: Yeah, it feels like it’s such a piece of, like a big piece of the puzzle that maybe we’re not talking about quite as much because so many of our kids are on iPads now.

Christina: Yes. Exactly. Yes.

Amy: Are you concerned about, because I’m just curious about this. In our elementary schools now, at least in my area, all of the kids have a Chromebook, and they do a large portion of their work on a Chromebook. Still, it feels like in the very younger grades, maybe like third grade and under, they’re still bringing home maybe more worksheets or papers or things you can tell they’re writing on. But a lot of the older work, you know, fourth grade and up, and then getting into my junior high school kids, it’s almost exclusively on Chromebook. Does that concern you at all as far as developing writing skills?

Christina: It’s one of those things where there’s still writing that’s happening. Even though we’re seeing Chromebooks and iPads being used, we’re still seeing, especially in the lower grades, we’re seeing handwriting with spelling tests and math problems and things like that. And it still is happening in the upper grades, but not as much.

Even in college, I will, because I’m an adjunct professor, when I have a class, I’ll say, “Okay, everybody close your laptops,” because I know they’re probably on, you know, shopping or doing something, not listening. And then I also want them to write because I know that they’re going to have that recall of information. They’re going to remember it if they write it down. So I’m like, “I want you to take notes during this time.” And there are some universities that have banned laptops because of that. They want them writing.

Amy: It’s so valuable. My daughter, my high school kid, my 15-year-old’s in an AP class, and I’ve noticed this teacher sends home like these big packets and she’s writing stuff out all the time. I’m like, “Oh, I that.” Let me ask you this question. One of the things I did when my kids were young, I would go back-to-school supply shopping is like one of my favorite things on the planet that I really probably don’t need them, but they’re just so awesome. It’s very exciting. I don’t know why. Whatever. Okay, so too much information about me.

But I would go and they’d have like the little spiral notebook things, and you could get them for, I don’t know, 15 cents or something. They’re probably not that much anymore, but it was very exciting. So I’d get like a big stack of them and bring them home. And then all throughout the year, my kids could just go and get one from the stack, and they would just fill it up, and they could write, they would draw, they would write their own stories, their own books, things like that. I don’t know that it’s really like healthy for like, you know, it’s not like the dotted line in the middle with the two lines on the top that’s like supposed to make your handwriting exactly perfectly proper, right? But is that helpful to just have them just writing at all? Or do we really want to focus on having them writing like perfectly, I need you to have the double lined, like the perfect paper to write on?

Christina: No, I think having that is a form of creativity. You know, we want them to be creative and using their imaginations and that’s a perfect way to do that. Even talking about those, you know, triple lines with the dots and we did an informal survey years ago and children were exposed to like six different line paper throughout the day. So, you know, when you think about it, like there’s worksheets that have single lines. There’s worksheets that have a cloud, so there’s no lines. They’re having to write in that. We use with Learning Without Tears, we use double lines. It’s just two lines that they’re going to write in those, and we tell them to bump the lines like bumper cars. To have that child-friendly language, you know, continuously.

But I think it’s great to have children to be able to just draw freely. When they’re writing, we’re watching them write. We’re helping them to show them how to write those letters correctly. And once they get it, they want to do that over and over. They want to be able to write it correctly. They want to show what they have been doing.

Amy: Yeah. Oh, I love this so much. Okay, I feel like I’ve had like so many little a-ha moments today. This has been so fabulous. I’ve been excited. We’re almost out of time, which is crazy because I feel like we could keep talking forever. But just before we go, like, is there any last tips that – like something you would want a mom or a teacher to take away from today’s conversation that they could use with their child? And then after that, I’m going to ask you where we can find more information. But let’s like just the last, what would you just tell a parent or a teacher that’s like overwhelmed, already has a lot going on. What’s like one thing that you would just share with them that they could start today and do that’s doable?

Christina: Yeah, I would say, you know, one of my favorite things to do is just to use a highlighter. And if you’re working on, say in the preschool classroom or you’re working on name writing, write their name with a highlighter and have them trace over that highlighter. Because a lot of times we see like dot-to-dot handwriting, you know, where it has the letter A and it’s all these dots. Well, they can’t tell that’s an A until they finish it and they go, “Oh, I just made an A.”

Well, that’s great and that’s fun, but you didn’t see the strokes of how to make that letter. But when we have it in that in just using a highlighter, that’s where they’re going to go over that and they’re able to see exactly how that letter should be written, and it’s that form of tracing for them before they’re ready to move into independently writing that.

Amy: Amazing. Oh my goodness. Mic drop. Okay, we’re doing it. It’s a good one. Thank you. Thank you for that. Okay, tell us, like if people want more information and want more tips and want more information about the Writing Without Tears, just anything that they want to come and learn from you, where do we find you?

Christina: So, we have our website is Learning Without Tears, so it’s L W T E A R S .com. So LWTears.com. And we have all of our manipulatives. There we didn’t even get into all the multisensory manipulatives that we have, but there’s so much. And there’s also – we have professional learning workshops and there’s lots of resources on our website for parents, for educators, that’s free. They can go to, download, print out, but lots of great webinars on there as well. There’s free webinars that we have that they can watch and our workshops are the best as well to get more information too.

Amy: That’s amazing. Okay, we’ll drop links for that everyone in the show notes so you don’t have to like be writing all the things down if you’re driving. Don’t write it. We’ll give you the link. Okay? We’ll get it for you. We got you.

Christina: You can write it later.

Amy: Just click. Links are so good. All right, we’ll get that to them. Thank you so much for coming and sharing this with us today. And I know I had some good a-has and some things I’m going to go test and try. So thank you so much for coming to share with us today. We so appreciate it.

Christina: Thank you so much, Amy. It was great to be here.

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Don’t you just love all the fun things we’re learning on this show together? Well, we wanted to give you a chance to practice a little bit of it at home. And so we made you a special freebie just for being a listener here. You can grab it at PlanningPlaytime.com/special-freebie.

So what this freebie is, I’ll tell you, is an amazing alphabet activity that you can start using with your kiddos. And it is based in play and is so fun. You can use dot markers with it. You can use Q-tip painting. You could use circled cereal.There’s all kinds of options. You can print it out today and get started. Just head over to PlanningPlaytime.com/special-freebie, and we’ll send that to you right away.

Thank you for hanging out with me today for this fun chat on Raising Healthy Kid Brains. If you want to see more of what we’re doing to support kiddos and their amazing brains, come visit us on our website PlanningPlaytime.com. See you next week.