Tracing helps children develop fine motor skills, which can aid them with other tasks, such as learning to write. Preschool children can trace to practice the skills they need to write, including learning how to hold a crayon or pencil. Tracing curved and straight lines, circles, and other shapes refine children's muscles and coordination, which makes it easier for them to transition to writing. Other benefits of tracing include improvement in hand/eye coordination, dexterity and spatial awareness. Kids who have not learned to form letters consistently correctly may be putting so much effort into remembering and writing the letters that they don't have the mental energy left for creative writing or correctly answering questions. This is why we feel it is important to teach correct letter formations from the very beginning. Once your child can write letters correctly, automatically, without thinking about them, he/she will be able to focus more on the actual learning process and on writing creatively! In this line of thought, we have designed this book with the following logic: ① Shapes and Patterns Before Letters and Numbers: If your child has not yet mastered drawing shapes and patterns, then work on these first before attempting numbers and letters. Tracing and drawing shapes and patterns will help your child master the diagonals and curves necessary for letter formations. ② Steps to Mastery: Trace then Copy then Write with Cues: The order of mastery is to first trace the letters and the numbers, then to copy them, then to write them with a starting point cue, then to write them completely independently without cues. If your child can not yet copy a letter with the correct formation, then you may find it helpful to guide your child's hand as they trace the letter or the number. ♥ Once your preschooler finishes tracing and writing a letter, he/she will be excited to color the animal illustrated at the end of each section. It is kind of a reward for the job well done, while continuing to learn the correct pencil grip. ③ Shadow Matching activity: It's a great activity for the youngest of learners that are just beginning to match shapes. Instead of focusing on small details of an image, they just focus on the shape. Formation is the most important skill with this activity, which leads to great benefits. This activity will lead to your learner being able to match letters to other letters, numbers to other numbers and shapes to other shapes. ④ Dot to dot activities: If you want to keep your child engaged and busy while helping to develop their hand-eye coordination, you'll enjoy discovering the wide range of dot to dot activities in this book. As they learn to join the numbers in the correct order, from 1 to 10, your child's ability to concentrate can be improved. They'll experience a great sense of achievement when they finish the activities. Buy today, to help your child take their first step confidently into the fun world of writing.