prewriting skill building

Helping children develop their writing skills through multisensory play-based instruction is a great way to introduce writing.  Activities with hands-on materials address different senses to teach correct formation, spacing, sequencing, and other writing skills.
Children move, touch, feel, and manipulate real objects as they learn the habits and skills essential for writing. Here are a few great ways to get started with pre-writing**
  

wooden box (or tray of some sort) sugar (or flour or salt) and a few upper case letters.

We did a few pre-strokes, straight lines 

curves and circles

Then we used our finger and traced the letter on the paper first and then made the letter in the sugar.

After a few times he got it all on his own***

It's fun to roll dough snakes and make capital letters and numbers. These are from Handwriting Without Tears you can buy them here. Or make your own, just print out large capital letters and laminate them. Let your kids roll play-dough to form the letters.

Children form capital letters using magnetic stamps. Magnetic chalk-like writing tool promotes important fine motor skills and lets children form letters/numbers on their own. Basically a manga-doodle with curved shapes and lines to create each uppercase letter. Another great product from Handwriting Without Tears, you can find these here

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Another great sensory way to learn to form letters are sandpaper cards. You could make your own but I found these and they are fairly reasonable. It would take so much less time then making them yourself* I found them here.                       Keep in mind that young children learning pre-writing skills should focus solely on forming uppercase letters only.