Children learn about writing by observing people who already know how and by participating with those people in simple writing experiences. Parents and older siblings serve as models for children, showing them what writers do.

Children are more likely to want to communicate in writing if they grow up in a home where they see you writing, the more inclined they are to want to write.

As children begin “writing” they may use drawing, scribbling, or invented letters and spelling to express themselves. These are legitimate forms of early writing and to be encouraged!!!

When you have writing tasks to do— even something as hum drum as your to-do-list—try to get in the habit of doing them when your child is around. Before you know it, you’ll have an eager writer on your hands. Educators look at writing very differently than they did a generation ago. The things that young children seem to do naturally when given paper and markers are now viewed at true forms of writing.

There are at least six different stages of writing:

DRAWING
Children draw and “read” their drawings as a form of communication. They may draw an unrecognizable form and say, “I played in the home center today with my friends.” Or they may draw a treelike form and say, “This says remember to take me to the park.”

SCRIBBLING
Young children believe they are writing when the scribble and often “read” what they have just scribbled. Children often will move the pencil like adults, making their scribbles from left to right.

INVENTED LETTERS
Many young children make up their own letters. A circle with a line drawn down from the bottom (resembling a lollipop) is a common invented letter. Again, children believe they are writing.

RANDOM LETTERS
As children become more aware of the alphabet, they often write the letters in long strings, usually at random.

INVENTED SPELLING
Invented spelling takes many forms but is related to the sounds the child hears in each word. At the beginning of this stage, children may write one letter to represent one word. Later, words are represented by two letters, the initial and ending letter sounds. As the child’s writing continues to mature, most sounds are represented in their invented spelling.

COMMON SPELLING
The child begins writing more and more words spelled as adults spell.
Comparing the child’s writing samples over a period of months, helps families understand that the child is working toward conventional writing by experimenting with different types of emergent writing.