Before early writers and readers emerge, there needs to be opportunities to encourage writing. In fact, early literacy is a better term as early reading goes hand in hand with early writing.
Having conversations, answering why questions and talking about what you see, along with sharing stories are just a few ways of engaging young children in conversations.
Creativity is a bridge to learning. It may initially start with a chunky crayon scribbling on paper and over time their fine motor skills become controlled and their drawing more detailed.
Early writing, also called emergent writing, is not related to writing letters of the alphabet. It’s about allowing children to make the connection that writing is the spoken word written down. At the age of three and four year olds, young children do not spend a long time making marks, sometimes their marks are accompanied by writing and as a parent a good tip is ：
Always to show great enthusiasm about their work and ask them to tell you about their picture, as you may find that some squiggles may represent writing and not just drawing.
The Stages of Writing Development are
- Scribbling
- During the scribbling stage, children learn to distinguish writing from drawing
- Children try to reproduce letters and words through scribbles
- Producing letter-like forms
- Writing letter sequences or strings
- Spelling phonetically
- Spelling conventionally
The very first stages of scribbling are finding out what young children can do with crayons and what marks they can make. Children discover that the crayon in their hand makes marks and as they develop their grip of the crayon, they can make different marks. Children experience how to make their ‘mark’ on the world and how excited and proud they are of this achievement. As their control grows so does their mark making, with purpose and a goal in mind.
For very young children, there are four stages of drawing and writing that you may see as your child grows from 15 months old to 3 years old. Your child may master these skills at a faster or slower pace.
Stage 1: Random Scribbling (15 months to 30 months)
At this stage, scribbles are usually the result of large movements holding the crayon in their fist. The very first stages of scribbling are finding out what young children can do with crayons and what marks they can make. Children discover that the crayon in their hand makes marks and as they develop their grip of the crayon, they can make different marks. Children experience how to make their ‘mark’ on the world and how excited and proud they are of this achievement. As their control grows so does their mark making, with purpose and a goal in mind. There is joy in creating art and at this age children relish the sensory experiences: the way the crayon feels, the smell of the paint, the squishy-ness of the clay.
Stage 2: Controlled Scribbling (two to three years old)
As children develop better control, they may start the transition to holding the crayon between their thumb and pointer finger and their scribbles become more controlled. Drawings may include open circles, diagonal, curved, horizontal, or vertical lines.
Stage 3: Lines and Patterns (30 months to 42 months)
Children now understand that writing is made up of patterns including lines and curves. They may try to imitate this in their own writing. They may not write actual letters; however, children will form letter like marks as they draw, including dots, lines and curves. This is an important step towards reading and writing as children will start to tell you what they have drawn and written.
Stage 4: Pictures of Objects and People (three to five years old)
Many adults think of “pictures” as a picture of something. The ability to recreate image and represent it on paper is a thinking skill that takes some time to develop. Initially, children name their unplanned creations with the names of people, animals, or objects they are familiar with. This changes over time. Soon your child will clearly plan what they will create prior to drawing. There will be more detail in their pictures and your children will hold the pencil with more control, using a variety of colours. Children’s first pictures often develop from circles, maybe a sun with an irregular circle and lots of stick “rays” shooting out or a person, usually a circle with some recognizable facial features.
Once your child has begun to purposefully draw images, they have mastered symbolic thinking. This is an important milestone in thinking skills and means that your child understands that lines on paper can be a symbol of something else, like an animal or familiar person. At this stage, children begin to understand the difference between pictures and writing and may start to scribble words under their drawing.
Stage 5: Letter and Word Practice (three to five years old)
Children have had experience with letters and seeing print in the environment at nursery, at home and in the community and may now begin to write letters. Usually children start by experimenting with the letters in their own names as they are familiar to them. They may also make “pretend letters” by copying familiar letter shapes and think that this is writing as it looks like the print they have seen in their environment.
Children begin to understand that words vary in size and contain a different number of symbols. As a result, children’s writing changes from one long string of letters or letter-like shapes to writing short and long patterns that look like words or sentences. While these letters and words are probably not technically correct, it does not matter as this is a milestone as your child is beginning to understand that text and print have meaning.
As children learn the sounds of letters and practices writing letters, children will start to apply their phonics knowledge in their writing. Initially they may write random letters and tell you what is says, although the letters do not represent the sounds. Then your children will gain the confidence to write the initial sounds of words.
The next stage may be to write the initial and final sounds, as these are what they hear when a word is spoken, and vowels are usually the last sounds to be heard. Over time, as their phonics awareness develops, they will start to hear all the sounds in words and write them phonetically. This means that the spelling is not correct, but the letters written represent the sounds heard in the words.
Eventually as children learn the different spelling patterns for the same sounds, children will start to apply this knowledge and their writing shows words being spelt correctly.
What parents can do to support the development of early writing
- Make art a regular part of playtime by providing chunky, easy-to-grip crayons, thick pencils, and washable markers.
- No need for instructions. Let children experiment and explore. Creativity means children have the power to express themselves in their own way and helps children to feel confident as their independence grows. By sitting nearby, observing, and taking pleasure in your child’s creation, you are providing all the guidance they need.
- Notice the process, not just the product. Parents often compliment children on their successes. Children can learn more when you observe and comment on the process when they are drawing or just ask them to tell you about their picture.
- Experiment with a variety of art materials. Let children paint with cotton balls, sponges, string; give your child crayons and rub over a textured surface; draw with chalk outside or glitter to your child’s sand play. What happens when you mix two different colours of water together?
- Encourage your child’s attempts to write. If your child scribbles something and then tells you what they “wrote,” take it seriously. Let them make and take their “shopping list” to the supermarket or show their (scribbled) letter to their grandparents. This is how children learn that words are powerful and have meaning.
- Display your child’s art and writing as children know their work is valued and meaningful.
- Creative activities help children to learn how to solve problems, come up with their own answers, and feel confident about the choices they make. Most important, creative expression lets children tap into the magic of their own imaginations—which is what being a child is all about.
References：
https://ldaamerica.org/early-writing-why-squiggles-are-important/
https://www.zerotothree.org/resources/305-learning-to-write-and-draw
