Welcome!

Ready to Print

Ready to Print is developed by an Occupational Therapist with over 25 years of experience working with children. It is a comprehensive tool for parents, therapists and educators to help teach pre-writing skills to children in order to build a strong foundation for beginning printers.

It features a huge variety of activities and levels (194 levels in 13 activities) to keep beginning printers engaged, and advanced tracking, customization, and reporting features to help parents and educators.

Ready to Print progresses through the pre-writing skills in a specific order, so that children can master the visual-motor, visual-perceptual, and fine motor skills necessary for correct printing patterns. It is designed to teach children the correct patterns for printing, and to avoid bad habits that are difficult to change as the child gets older.

We are committed to keeping Ready to Print the most comprehensive pre-writing app available.

Features

Built for Therapists and Educators

Ready to Print includes these features:

    • Provides activities for both pre-writing skills.
    • Designed with a progression of skills that work towards correct printing patterns.
    • Allows you to change size settings to match each child’s skill level.
    • Lets you choose which activity and level to begin on.
    • High-contrast mode can be set by activity or by user.
    • Change the scale / size of activities by activity or by user.
    • Allows setting up multiple user profiles, and remembers skill settings and tracks progress for each user.
    • For printing, turn guide lines (rules) on or off.
    • Works with a stylus.
    • Allows you to send progress reports via e-mail directly from the app (iPad/iPad Mini only, this feature not available on Kindle and Android versions).
    • Detects the screen size of your device (e.g., iPad vs iPad mini, different sizes of android tablets and Kindles), and adjusts sensitivity automatically.
    • Choose from either sound effects or professionally-recorded voice prompts.
    • Free Companion Worksheets available for everyone at this link: Ready to Print Free Companion Worksheets

13 Activities

Ready to Print features thirteen different activities. All can be played with fingers, or use a stylus to work on pencil grasp. Scroll through all of the activities here.

a1_touch
a2_ordtouch
a3_tgrag
a4_match
a5_path
a6_shapes
a7_dots
a8_pinch
a9_let
a10_freed
Settings
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a1_touch

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.

a2_ordtouch

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.

a3_tgrag

Touch and Drag
This activity focuses on basic isolation of the index finger, visual scanning, and visual tracking skills. It introduces the touch-and-drag action that is used in the remainder of the activities in Ready to Print. It also introduces the down, up , right, and left directions.

a4_match

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.

a5_path

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.

a6_shapes

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.

a7_dots

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.

a8_pinch

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 accommodate different hand sizes.

a9_let

Letters and Numbers (4 Activities)
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 (not shown in this screenshot). 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. Guide lines may be turned on or off.

a10_freed

Free Draw
This activity is a blank canvas for drawing with the finger. You can choose from a palette of 8 colors.

Settings

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 the main settings page shown here. Settings are stored and remembered for each individual student (when you use this feature).

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Educator Feature

Login and Tracking

Using Ready to Print’s optional Login features, the app can remember settings and track progress for multiple users. On the iPad, you can e-mail progress reports and tracing paths.

Testimonials

Feedback and Accolades

Recognition

    • Great article by professional Occupational Therapist- Tech it Issie
    • Children’s Technology Review Editors Choice Award
    • Apps for Children with Special Needs Featured App
    • A TeachersWithApps TWA Pick
    • A FunEducationalApps Top Pick
    • “This app is excellent for children of all ages and abilities because it targets so many different fine motor skills and at all different levels.” – BridgingApps.org

Feedback from Users

    • “I love this app! It is great for working on so much beyond writing. I use it with several of my school-age and younger OT clients and have seen great facilitation of skill development with it, including attention to task, visual scanning, point/touch accuracy (including visual perceptual accuracy, motor control of hand/fingers, etc.), sequencing, cause & effect, symbol/picture recognition, and so much more…and that’s before you even get to the writing sections! We also have used this as a bridge to AAC use, with focus on finding a target and touching it with accuracy (a helpful skill for many AAC options!)
    There is much more to this app than just printing. 👍
    (Signed…OT with 29 years experience.)”
    • “I truly love your app. I work in a special education school and paper handwriting tasks are difficult for my students. Your app engages them in handwriting tasks which I love!” – a school OT
    • “My son and I really enjoyed playing with the app and it made learning fun without even realizing that he was practicing important skills” – The iMums
    •”…a great, new app for your pediatric OT iTool Kit!” – OTs With Apps
    •I love the pinching activity, and the fact that you can have different profiles to keep track of different people using the app. – Therapy Fun Zone
    •”It’s such an awesome app…I’ll be sure to recommend it to all of my friends who have kids.” – Parent
    •I love this app – Teacher
    •It’s really nice to have the data component – School OT
    •It’s the best I have tried – OT
    •I really love all aspects of the program – School OT
    •The App is Amazing! – Teacher
    •Definitely my favorite therapy app! – OT

Free for Everyone

Free Companion Workseets

Ready to Print Companion Worksheets are printable PDF files that are free for everyone to use. They feature patterns and graphics taken directly from the Ready to Print app. Download the worksheet packets individually by activity, or download a ZIP file containing all packets in one file.

(To save file to your computer, right click on the filename above then select “Save as…”)

Contact us / Support

We're here to help

Contacting us

If you have a technical question, purchasing question, a question about how to use Ready to Print, or any suggestions or feedback, we’d love to hear from you.  Please drop us a line at via our contact page or by email at support [at] essare [dot] net.

Guided access mode on iPad

Read about how to lock Ready to Print (or any other app) on-screen on an iPad with Apple’s instructions HERE

Privacy Policy

Your students' privacy is important

Ready to Print is a self-contained app – all of the app’s data stays on the device. Read our full privacy policy here:  Ready to Print Privacy Policy

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Ready to Print is a tablet app for developing pre-writing skills in students 2-7 years old.