I'm on my phone - so I hope this comes out without a ton of oddly spelled words lol!
My kids were all in Montessori and they loved the writing in sand. Also wrote in shaving cream and loved that. Also had things called rainbow letters where there were large letters on paper written three times almost on top of each other in three different colors and the kids had to trace each letter in each color. My kids loved to paint when they were toddlers so you could have him paint big letters and then put them together into words. Sidewalk chalk is also fun and you. An write really large. I wouldn't worry about pencil size and grip yet - neither did our preschool. One thing I did for my ds was I would make "books" for him just out of construction paper that were about whatever he wanted me to write about -bulldozers,pizza, whatever. I didn't worry if a word was too big.
We also read read read read to our kids -especially when they were toddlers. That's basically how my ds learned to read -just watching us read, no matter how complicated the book.
And our kids loved refrigerator magnets too -
Have fun!
polarbear
