Reading and Writing

Nope, that’s not a typo. It’s a clue to today’s blog post: writing. With Valentine’s Day coming there’s a good chance your child will be coloring or painting or cutting out hearts, especially if they are older than 2 years of age. With the excitement about making and giving valentines it’s a good time to encourage your child to write his/her name. This is a very helpful skill for kindergarten readiness. (At school, children will be encouraged to use a capital letter to start a name and lower case for the other letters.)

There are different ways to promote learning to print a name. You may print your child’s name and give him/her a washable marker to trace right over. The marker is like a car and it tries to drive right over the letter road. Or your child may like to watch you make part of a letter and copy what you did. Some children may only manage a few random squiggles but it’s a beginning. Some children (about the age of 4) can make some recognizable letters.

Kids will have lots of different ways that they hold a pencil, crayon or marker. Your child may be comfortable with a grownup hand guiding the pencil or may be quite independent and want to try all alone. Because fine motor control is only just developing at this stage it will be a very challenging activity. Some children may also not yet be right or left hand dominant and will switch hands depending on the side of the page. Keep the activity enjoyable for your little one with lots of positive feedback. Can you and your child hand-le this?

Over the weekend, we could have our name written at one of the activity tables at a community Chinese New Year celebration. Many kids, little and big, were in line. Of course, I was excited to have my name done too and thought this was a fun idea for a blog post. (I’ve since discovered this can be done on-line anytime!)

Learning to print one’s name is often suggested as a kindergarten readiness activity. About the age of 2 or 3, kids may “print” their name as a few scribbly marks on a paper. Gradually, these marks will more closely resemble the actual letters, about the age of 3 or 4. Sometimes the first letter is the only one that is recognizable. This was written by a child about two and a half yrs. old and there is an L and and O if you know to look for it. The other names were written by a 5-yr old.

Some children are eager to practice with a pencil and paper and some are not interested at all. But that’s not the only way to learn a name. Watch for inexpensive buckets of precut paper or foam letters and let kids find the ones in their name (you may have to limit the choices to 2 or 3). Adults can outline the letters and let kids fill in them using practically anything from buttons to pasta to playdough to bingo dabbers. Older preschool kids might like to find the letters needed in magazines or trace over ones that adults write.

Printing names is often one of children’s early attempts at independent writing.  Adult help will be needed over the long-term to help children with learning their names using lots of different ways and a variety of materials, just as readiness for kindergarten progresses over the long-term. Fine motor control is still developing and is certainly more challenging for some children than for others. But at least we don’t have to learn this printing; it’s more like an art form! Do you know your name in Chinese writing?