One of the greatest joys professionally for me is to teach children to write. I love it! The joy when a child proudly brings me their storybook with dots, squiggles, and lots of meaning.
The very best way that you can encourage your child to work on their writing skills at home and to build writing confidence, is to have some fun.
Please see the chart below to assess how your child’s writing is developing.
My top tip is to decorate a box with beautiful wrapping paper and to fill it with interesting pens, pencils (nice and sharp) and all sorts of office type objects that your child has seen you use and would love to try for themselves e.g. envelopes, a hole punch, a variety of pens, old stamps to stick and reuse, a variety of paper or old greeting cards with the writing bit cut off and the nice plain card to write or squiggle on.
My second tip is to encourage your child to write for meaning e.g. to create a letter, to write the envelope (with help if required), and then literally to walk to the post box and post it. What would make this activity even better would be for your child to receive a letter in return. Children learn best when you can engage them in an activity that they are interested in and if the activity has meaning to them.
There is no right way, it is about having a go and having fun.
At Little Lessons, we will be work together on activities to develop each child’s fine motor skills and to build techniques for beautiful handwriting. We will be sharing some fun ideas in future posts.
This in an example of one of the assessment tools that we will use to assess your child’s writing development in our reception lessons.