Playing with print: Ways parents can encourage children’s writing success

Most parents understand that reading to young children from a very early age is one of the best ways to encourage a lifelong love of books, as well as teach them about the sounds, rhythms and structure of our spoken language. However, an equally important, yet often overlooked way of learning about language, comes from the writing that we do with our young children.

"Write with my toddler?" you might ask. "He doesn’t even have the words to ask for a glass of juice. How on earth can I expect him to put his thoughts down with pen to paper?" According to Linda Carr, Early Literacy Coordinator for the Capital Region Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), writing with your young child is easier and a lot more fun than you might think.

"Helping your children become writers can be as simple as providing them with a piece of paper and a chunky crayon to scribble with," says Carr. "The key is for parents to understand that their children’s early scribbles, pictures and strings of letters have meaning to the child and carry a message, albeit a temporary one."

When it comes to early writing experiences, Carr recommends that parents temper their desire to correct their children’s work. Certainly a parent should model the "right" direction a letter should face or the correct spelling of a word, just as a parent models the correct pronunciation of a word when a child is learning to talk. However, parents should be careful not to overwhelm their child and make writing a tedious task.

"For young children, simply being allowed to experiment with writing, their own writing, can be a wonderful way to learn about the relationship between letters and sounds, as well as be a way to express themselves creatively," says Carr. "If they learn that what they try their hand at early on is praised and valued just for what it is, then they will be more likely to take risks when it comes to expressing themselves with writing later on."

Writing for the joy of it

Carr says that just as with reading, young children develop their ideas about the importance of writing from what they are exposed to at home. For this reason, she suggests using everyday activities to help encourage children’s understanding of the value of printed words and to give them practice with writing. Here are some suggestions:

• Talk with your children about what you are doing as you write out a phone message or make note of an important family event on the calendar.
   
• Enlist your children’s help in making a grocery list. Talk with them about a few of the items that you want to buy and have them use their own writing (with young children this may be squiggles, swirls, symbols or pictures) to make their own list of the items they will be responsible for remembering during your outing. Take the time to discuss what they have written and make a point of referring to the list throughout the shopping trip.
   
• Make a game out of finding the letters of your child’s name on signs, books, magazines, labeled food containers, etc.
   
• Provide your child with a set of alphabet tiles or magnetic letters. Very young children will enjoy sorting them by color and exploring the different curves and lines of their shapes. With older children these can be used to make more formal words and sentences.

Giving your child the tools of writing

Some children like having a formal writing space where they can write; others prefer to write when the spirit moves them. The following are some readily available, inexpensive and portable items to have on hand for writing exploration, regardless of where your child finds her/his muse:

• Newsprint, scrap paper, used greeting cards, mail-order forms, envelopes, small notebooks.
   
• A variety of washable markers, crayons, pencils and other writing tools (use your child’s age and ability level to determine the variety and relative safety of the types of materials they have access to).

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