Do you remember your parents telling you how they would, in their vacations, or during weekends write letters, yes, letters to their cousins or aunts and uncles? Oh, the sheer pleasures of putting in a hand-crafted letter into the envelope, affixing a stamp on it and dropping it yourself into a post-box! With the letter-writing activity almost gone out of our lives, this previously used to contribute in many ways to a child’s nurturing the fine art of writing. In today’s age, what with the texting and email mania, writing with hand has almost gone out of vogue!
Getting your child to write with pencil on paper should be encouraged, just when he grows out of being a toddler and is beginning life as a pre-schooler. It is now that he gets interested in scribbling on any surface, the wall being his favourite!
Here are some 15 fast ways to promote writing for your child:
• Give her lots and lots of paper- big-sized ones, crayons and color pencils. Whenever she gets the urge to write, she can scribble away; you might be busy and would not like to be distracted. So at that time, keeping her engaged with paper and pencil will keep her busy too.
• Select a special area of the house- stick up a huge paper on it, and let the child write, color or do whatever takes her fancy on it. She can then show off her ‘works of art’ to her friends and family!
• Read out from a story book or make your own story. As you go ahead into the story, tell her to write down words as she hears them. Later both of you can read through the words together.
• When your child is learning the alphabet, you could keep large cut-outs of them all around the house. This will help her associate faster and help her learn the alphabets better- later you could ask her to write down as she sees them.
• List-making can become an enjoyable chore for slightly bigger children. Take them with you on your grocery shopping, before that, lead them to writing down what all you need to buy.
• Pictures of your family can be given to your child, and you can ask her to write down the name of everyone in them.
• Clay or dough can help them form alphabets. They would enjoy sticking their hands into the soft material, and learning too will happen at the same time.
• Stories that you tell them or poetry that they listen to can be good instruments of learning to write. Tell them to write down the story or song in their own language. Do not get upset if they go wrong with the spelling initially, helping to form word association is the main objective here.
• Bring in the old habit of letter-writing. It is sure to keep your child captivated for hours, as he pens a letter to his favorite cousin or grandma. Both of you can then go through the entire process of posting the letter.
• Write out some sentences or words of your own on a sheet of paper. Then ask your child to search for them in an old newspaper or a magazine article, cut them out and paste them on the sheet. Then ask her to compare the two. A great way to inculcate the art of both reading and writing.
• Easy crosswords or word games can be played with the entire family sitting down together. Tell your child to fill in the words herself.
• When your child goes on a picnic or whenever there is a family outing, tell her to carry along a notebook and write down the notable events of the day. Afterwards, you could help her write out a report.
• Books with lots of letters and alphabet games can be a great way to encourage the writing process.
• Every time there is a festival or special occasion in the family, get her to make greeting cards, design them and then spell out her name on them.
• Tell her to fill in the blanks of words with some letters written in them. When she fills up the dashes with letters, it would help her to form the meaning of the word.
• There are numerous ways of encouraging the love of writing in your child. Let your imagination soar and creativity take over! And enjoy seeing your child forming the love for this art! The valuable art of writing!
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