I love children’s writing! I love the diligence they show in learning to make the strokes just right. I love the pride they feel when they look at the finished product. And I LOVE the messages they write to their teacher with their wonderful phonetic spelling!
Desiring to write is a natural progression of a child’s learning. They begin to write letters, then their own name, then their family members’ names. When teaching a child to write letters, you should always teach them the lower case letters. The capital letters are much less used. Children who recognize and write lower case letters have a head start! When they are taught to capitalize the first letter in their names, they only have to change one letter. When they examine books and scan the words before they can actually read, they are able to recognize ninety percent of the letters.
Once a child can write a few words, he begins to put those words in some sensible order.
The writer spells by sounding out the letters to make words. Phonetic spelling will give way to “dictionary” spelling in time, but allowing a young child to spell phonetically reinforces his skills and encourages creativity in writing. If he can only write what he can spell, his first works are very limited. The importance in creative writing is to be able to transfer a thought from mind to paper. Some of the greatest writers may be poor spellers, but we need their ideas. They will learn to use spell-check eventually!
Once a child develops a real sense of completing sentences, she begins to write paragraphs. Usually she begins with notes to parents or friends. Children’s faces light up as they see that the recipient of their note can understand exactly what they thought in their brain just by reading the words! It may seem like a simple accomplishment to us who have long since forgotten the process, but it is a gigantic step in the educational continuum of Language Arts!
One of my very favorite children’s notes has been on my refrigerator for several years.
It makes me smile every day! Several are in a poster frame in my office space. Many more are saved in a big plastic file box. When I read them, the words they share encourage me and I am thankful for the place God has provided for me in their lives. What a joy to help children learn to communicate with written words!
Click here to see some recent work by the Cox Cubs.
