Helping your child to write? Writing should be seen as an enjoyable experience, as a fun activity, not as something to be feared or dreaded. In the early stages what children produce often bears little resemblance to standard writing. A child s idea of writing may be a series of lines and squiggles. It may not look like conventional writing to adults, but we must remember that this writing is not mearly scribble, but their attempt at making sense of a very complicated system of recording that we call writing. It is important to recognise that early mark-making is a vital stage in the process of learning to write. Practise holding writing equipment. Some children enjoy the sheer joy of mark making over and over again. They look for ways to imitate adult writing behaviour. Other children are reluctant even to pick up a pencil, so the following activities are to encourage children to write for enjoyment. The writing is not to be judged or marked for technical achievement but to have a go and not be inhibited by having to think about spellings or handwriting. The activities are based on role play settings and designed to draw on their own experiences of life and extend their knowledge of the world. They seek to develop the child s imagination, fine motor skills and their confidence. These activities also give a range of different styles of writing, different purposes for writing and writing to different people. All of these things will contribute to their development in literacy. When writing with young children remember that they should write with a variety of different implements pencils, felt tip pens, wax crayons, chalk, fingers to name but a few. They also need to write on different surfaces e.g. paper, card, sand, chalkboard (not walls, tabletops!)
Celebrations Most people celebrate in one way or another and so the idea of celebration means different things to different people. Celebrations can take the form of birthday parties, festivals, weddings, family gatherings, naming ceremonies etc. Writing opportunities Invitation Design an initiation for your celebration. Think about who is being invited and who is doing the inviting. Think about where and when the celebration will take place and why. Remember the party could be about a real or pretend event. You might want to provide envelopes for the invitation to go in for the children to address. Menu What food will be at the event? Is it real e.g. sausages or made up food e.g. slug juice. Design a menu card listing all the various foods you might choose. Think about the layout of the menu. Place setting cards Make place settings for your guests so that everyone knows where to sit. If unable to write names children could make a shape or a mark in a particular colour, then give a corresponding colour/shape badge to the person. Make a card E.g. birthday card, congratulations card, moving house, thank you etc. Write labels for presents Describe the clothes you might wear for this special occasion. Send directions to your guests to let them know how to get to the event.
Holidays and visits These activities can be used in respect of a day out, a visit to grandma or a holiday. The concept of going somewhere different and making preparations for a special time away from home is what is important. Brochure Create a brochure for the place you are going to visit. You might want to provide the child with examples from travel agent, postcards. You could also make an imaginary place. Think about where you want to stay e.g. hotel, caravan, and tent. What will you find at your destinations? E.g. seaside, beach, park, caste, farm etc. Travel ticket template Make tickets for your holiday. Think about what sorts of tickets they will be e.g. bus, plane, space rocket, magic carpet etc. fill in where you want to go; times, dates, price and sign it. Luggage label template Fill in the details on your luggage label you don t want it to get lost. Postcard template Send a postcard to someone telling about your wonderful trip. Did you have fun? What was the weather like? What did you see? Extension activities Make travel agents in your own home. Make posters from old magazines, cutting them up and creating a new holiday place. Make a name badge for your travel agents. Make your own passport. As well as developing their knowledge and understanding of the world, the children will realise that they need to write for lots of different reasons and in lots of different places. You can write about real or pretend things. Your child will start to understand that there is a difference between pictures and print, but that both can be used to explain things to you. By talking about things first, children will get their thinking sorted out and will then be able to experiment with writing it down.
In the Garden These activities can be carried out whether you have a large garden, a window box or a yogurt pot with cress seeds. Children may be used to seeing adults labelling their seeds, writing what was or will be planted, both where and when. A gardening project is therefore an excellent place to foster early writing skills, as there is a definite reason for recording and labelling, together with the enjoyable practical activities of digging, watering and generally getting messy. The following activities can all be used to promote early mark making skills, classification, diary work, design and layout of print on paper. Labels Create the labels to be placed adjacent to the relevant plant. Running record Keep a running record of the gardens progress. You could model how to write this. You could also let your child make their own marks to represent what they planted. They could also write about anything else they saw in the garden e.g. slugs and snails or what the weather was like. My garden centre catalogue Use catalogues, newspapers, old cards, children can cut out and make their own catalogue with items which could be sold in a garden centre. They could label the items and price them. My garden design Plan and label your imaginary garden. You might use nursery rhymes as your starting point e.g. Mary, Mary quite contrary. You could think about planting real plants or maybe make up yogurt own plants e.g. a hamburger tree, a pizza plant. Mary Mary Mary Mary quite contrary How does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells And pretty maids all in a row.
Round and round the garden Round and round the garden Like a teddy bear One step, two steps Tickle you under there! Extension Visit a friend s garden, park or a garden centre. Look and talk about the plants, labels, seed packets. Read stories about gardens. Your child will gain an appreciation that writing conveys meaning i.e. there is a purpose for writing. Also that print is everywhere around them.
In the Home This is using a familiar setting, showing children how writing is part of their every day life. Writing takes many different forms e.g. helping us to remember things, for fun, helping to be organised etc. Labels Make labels for different objects found in your home. You could write the words out yourself to start with, and then let your child write it themselves. The labels could be blu-tacked on to the object. Don t have more than 10 around at any one time. Memo board Write down a list of the jobs that you need doing, people to see, appointments with the doctor/dentists, what you ve run out of that you need to buy, important dates to remember. Make it as personal to your child as possible. Crossword Writing that is done for fun activities let your child fill in a crossword with letters. Extension Fill in old diaries and calendars. Make pretend shopping lists. Make up recipes real and pretend. Write letters and address envelopes to real and fictious people or characters. Fill in old catalogue forms. Provide notepads, old cards, and envelopes from junk mail. Your child will have gained positive experiences from seeing and using writing in a familiar place. They will have used writing in a range of different way labels, crosswords, list etc. They will have had the chance to use a wide range writing implements and on different layouts. Your child will have had the opportunity to write for different reasons to help them remember something, for fun, for information etc. they will gain confidence in writing and increase their pencil control.
Jobs Children have a wide range of knowledge about the concepts of jobs and the worlds of work. These activities are aimed at building on previous knowledge as well as possibly introducing them to new occupations. Children will have an awareness of jobs such as teachers, construction workers (Bob the builder), nurses and doctors, post people(postman pat) fire-fighters (Fireman Sam) We have chosen to highlight one particular job, to give some practical ideas of what you could do. Labels Using old envelopes, address letters to real or imaginary people the school secretary, the queen, miss R Riding Hood, Mr H Dumpty. Make labels for parcels. The parcels could be old boxes and containers which the children could wrap up. This activity helps to develop their fine motor control, which helps with the control of their pencil. Stamps Set up a pretend post office e.g. list of items for sale, stamps, envelopes, cards, TV licence, collection times for letters, make your own stamps for sale. Extension Teacher registers, mark work. Doctor prescriptions, name badges. Hairdressers appointments, lists of what doing to hair, magazines for customers to read. Builder write down jobs, list of things to do the job. Your child will gain knowledge and understanding of the world of work, and how writing is a very big part of it. They will come to see that people write for many different reasons. They will use language and words in a variety of ways and will meet many new words.
Shopping Shopping is a familiar activity to most children. Real life experiences can be incorporated into these activities as well as opportunities for pretend play. Use what you have available and what your child is aware of. You don t need to go out and buy specific items. Shopping lists Create a shopping list e.g. for a birthday party, going on a holiday, a celebration meal, buying clothes etc. Signs/labels Make a pretend shop. Create an open and closed sign that can be hung up on a door handle for example, give your shop a name. Produce labels for your produce. You can have any sort of shop shoe, supermarket, jewellers, clothes to name but a few. Templates for cheques Pay for items by writing out a cheque. Extensions Make a list of all the shops you can think of. Design a shopping centre. Design a carrier bag. Go for a walk and discover signs and symbols within your local area. Fill in order forms from old catalogues. Your child will learn that we record things for very practical reasons e.g. the shopping list helps us to remember everything. They will also learn that writing conveys information e.g. the shop is open or closed. They will learn that writing can be about real or pretend experiences.