Activities
Ready to Print features ten different activities. All can be played with fingers, or use a stylus to work on pencil grasp.
Touch
The Touch activity shows between 3 and 20 pictures on the screen. The child touches each one, in any order, to transform it to a new shape. This activity focuses on basic isolation of the index finger and visual scanning skills. It features 16 different levels, with different pictures and numbers of items. The size of the items may be changed to suit the child’s skill level.
Ordered Touch
This is similar to the Touch activity, except the child is prompted to touch the items in a specific order. This activity focuses on basic isolation of the index finger, visual scanning and visual tracking skills.
It also introduces the directionality of printing strokes including: left to right, top to bottom,
diagonal and circles starting at the top and going toward the left. The size of the items may be changed to suit the child’s skill level.
Matching
In this activity, between 2 and 6 shapes (You can choose how many) are shown on the top of the screen, and matching outlines are shown on the bottom of the screen. There’s always one less outline than shape. The child drags the shapes into their matching outlines. This activity focuses on visual scanning, visual tracking and visual motor (eye-hand coordination) skills. It uses basic shapes due to these being important for pre-writing and pre-drawing skills (as well as pre-math). Shapes are made up of the same lines and curves as letters, which assists with letter recognition later on. The size of the shapes may be changed to suit the child’s skill level.
Path Following
In this activity, the child draws a line inside of a path from one picture to another. The activity features a progression of 25 different paths. It focuses on visual tracking, visual motor and fine motor skills. The paths follow a progression of pre-writing strokes from simple to more complex. These strokes will be used to form the shapes and letters in later activities. The width of the paths may be changed to suit the child’s skill level.
Shape Tracing
In this activity, the child traces a line inside of one of nine different shapes. This activity focuses on visual tracking, visual motor and fine motor skills. The shapes follow a progression from simple to more complex. The direction that the child is prompted to trace the shape teaches correct stroke patterns for letter formation when printing. The width of the paths that are traced may be changed to suit the child’s skill level.
Connect the Dots
In this activity, the child draws one of ten different shapes by connecting on-screen dots. The app will prompt the child indicating the next section to be drawn. This activity focuses on visual tracking, visual motor and fine motor skills. The paths follow the progression of drawing shapes from simple to more complex. The direction that the child is prompted to draw the shape teaches correct stroke patterns for letter formation when printing. This activity requires more refined drawing skills and allows the child an opportunity to imitate or copy the pattern in a free-draw area on the right-hand side of the screen.
Pinching
In this activity, pairs of pictures are presented on the screen, and the child uses two fingers to bring them together. It focuses on fine motor skills, specifically the pincer grasp. This grasp is important for a correct grasp on any writing utensil. This activity can be completed using the thumb and forefinger, thumb and middle finger, thumb and ring finger, or thumb and little finger for further fine motor coordination and hand skill development. The distance between the pairs of pictures may be adjusted to accomodate different hand sizes.
Letters
and
Numbers
In these activities, the child will incorporate all of the skills learned in the previous activities and begin to learn correct formation of the 26 capital and lower-case letters, and ten numeric digits. Like Connect the Dots, this activity provides an opportunity to imitate or copy the letter in a free-draw area next to it. The size of the letters and numbers being traced may be gradually reduced as the child’s skill level improves. For the Letters activity, you may either work on all capital letters, all lower-case letters, or capital & lower-case pairs.
Free Draw
This activity is a blank canvas for drawing with the finger. You can choose from a palette of 8 colors.
Settings
You can adjust every activity in Ready to Print to match the level of the student. Activities can be adjusted on-the-fly, or on a main settings page. Settings are stored and remembered for each individual student (when you use this feature).
