An open teal The Play Way box with the Creative Handwriting Play Kit contents arranged above it: a large orange Creative Projects art pad, a smaller green one, two pencils, a box of twelve Faber-Castell wax crayons, a black The Play Projects case and the Creative Handwriting guide.

A boy at a table makes a circle with the thumb and one finger on each hand, copying a finger warm-up playing on the laptop in front of them.

A child holds an open box of twelve Faber-Castell wax crayons in both hands, with the black The Play Projects case underneath.

A boy smiles with one arm stretched high above the head, making a letter shape with the whole body.

Over the shoulder, a child draws long blue wavy lines across a large white pad while the same drawing plays on a laptop alongside.

An adult sits at a table writing into an open guide printed with wide orange bands, a green sofa behind.

Creative Handwriting Play Kit

Name: Creative Handwriting Play Kit
Brand: The Play Way
SKU: HANDWRITING-02
Price: 59.0 AUD
Availability: InStock

The Play Way

$59.00

$59.00 ~~$0.00~~

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Support the part of handwriting that is learning and remembering how each letter is made, with a story, a drawing and a whole body version of every letter of the alphabet. Making the brain, body connection with the alphabet.

This play kit was curated by our therapy team for the child who will draw all afternoon but cannot remember which way a letter goes, or hasn’t begun the journey of learning that yet. Instead of copying letters down a lined page, they hear a story about the letter, draw a picture from it, then write it, and later make its shape with their arms and their whole body. The pads, the crayons and the pencils are what they work with. It is the second of our three handwriting play kits. Choose between them by what is challenging your child rather than by how old they are, and start here if they can sit and draw happily, but need to get a handle on their letters in a creative and interactive way.

The Creative Handwriting Play Kit, previously named the Creative Handwriting Program, is a children's letter formation and handwriting kit put together by paediatric occupational therapists in Australia, for children learning the shapes of the alphabet through storytelling, guided drawing and movement rather than through repetition on lined paper.

The box holds a Play Projects compendium containing a large A3 Creative Projects art pad, a smaller A4 pad, twelve wax crayons and two pencils, and a parent guide. The course runs in three modules: form drawing on the straight and curved lines that letters are built from, then a story, a guided drawing and the letter formation for each letter of the alphabet, then body integration.

Every kit also comes with supporting video in The Play Way Hub, included, a little over seven hours across more than eighty short sessions, covering finger warm-ups, form drawing, letter formation in upper and lower case, and the body integration activities. Most families using this kit have a child somewhere between 4 and 8, the stretch where the alphabet is being learned and letter formation is settling. That is a guide rather than a rule. Children build these skills at their own pace, so choose by what is getting in the way now rather than by how old they are.

It is the second of three handwriting play kits, between the Getting Ready to Write Play Kit and the Handwriting in Practice Play Kit. Which of the three to choose: Getting Ready to Write is for the child whose body is not ready to sit and use a pencil yet. Creative Handwriting is for the child who is learning what each letter looks like and how it is made. Handwriting in Practice is for the child who can already form the letters but writes slowly, tires quickly, or cannot read it back.

From The Play Way, built by an OT who has worked with children for nearly 20 years. Ships Australia wide. Contains small parts and items recommended for ages 3 and up, and adult supervision is needed.

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Size guide

Creative Handwriting Play Kit

$59.00

$59.00 ~~$0.00~~

WHAT'S INSIDE

What's in this play kit

A full kit of play-tools, curated to work together.

The Creative Compendium

The neoprene zip case, and everything they need inside it: a Creative projects art pad for the drawings, and one for the letters we’ll practice, twelve wax crayons and two pencils. The pads are blank on purpose, so there is no line to stay inside and nothing to get wrong while your child moves through this creative approach to learning the letters.

Parent Guide

A written guide for you (the adult), covering what each of the three modules is doing, form drawing, letter writing and body integration.

Why we built it this way

A story, a drawing, then the letter

Every letter gets a three pronged approach. A story told with no pictures in it, so your child can use their imagination to create memory, then a guided drawing of what they heard so they’re integrating that memory and practising the shapes they need to write letters, then the letter itself.

The letter goes into the body too

The last module has them writing each letter in the air with both arms, making its shape with their body alongside someone else, and walking it out at full size on the floor. Your child feels the shape as well as sees it, which often gives them a memory to call up later, when the pencil is in their hand.

Nothing to prepare and nothing to mark

The videos do the teaching. You are not the one explaining how a letter is formed or correcting a page of them, which in a lot of houses is the part that turns handwriting into an argument. Two blank pads, crayons and pencils, and your child follows along.

INCLUDED WITH YOUR PLAY KIT

The videos that come with it

This kit is centred around the videos: more than eighty short sessions for the letters alone, three for every letter of the alphabet. Your child works at their own pace, and can press pause, rewind or replay the video anytime they like. Everything they work with while they watch is in the box, so they can start on the first activity from the day it arrives. When you want the learning behind it, the videos walk you through what each of the three modules is doing and why the whole process is delivered in the way we’ve done it. This kit has a little over seven hours in total video, most of it directly guiding the child through the process which means you don’t have to. We'll send your invitation to access it all when your kit ships.

WHO THIS PLAY KIT IS FOR

If letters look like this

They will draw for an hour, and still cannot remember how to make a letter even though they’ve started learning them at school.
Letters come out backwards, or start from the bottom of the page.
You haven’t started learning letters but your child is really keen to get started.

If any of that sounds like your family, this is who we built the play kit for.

Who made this

Kait is an OT. She has been working with children and families for nearly 20 years, and she has four kids of her own. She built this play kit in conjunction with an artist who is also a teacher. Copying a letter forty times mostly works for the children it was going to work for. But some children need a different approach, a creative one, where the brain and body integrate learning through doing in a variety of ways. The story, the drawing, the letter forming and the body integration were put in that order by our team so there is something to remember and allocate meaning to, before there is any pressure to write.

5,000+
Australian children have used our play kits
20 years
of Kait working with children and families

Creative Handwriting Play Kit