Writing letters

I finally stumbled across a method for teaching my almost 3 year old to write letters.  She's been trying for months and months, and so the will is there, but it has been difficult to actually form the letters well.  She just recently got the concept of "connect the dots," and I remembered those old workbooks from when I was in kindergarten in which they would have you trace the letter a few times and then make it on your own. So I made a connect the dots letter P with paint.  Something about using the paint and paint brush suddenly made it accessible.  It became a game.  I would make dots on the page in the order of a letter, describing the motions she would need to do to trace it (e.g., for a D - "line straight down, and a semi-circle to the side") and she would trace it.  We'd do it over and over.  She loves this game.   After doing this for awhile with paint, we moved onto pen and paper, with smaller letters.  Now she still can't construct a letter on her own, but she can trace the ones we have practiced perfectly.  And she thinks it is fun!