Develop writing skills in your child naturally without stressing and an expensive writing curriculum, starting from the time they are young.
There are ways to incorporate writing from a young age that helps your child become accustomed to writing in a natural way.
We will explore those ways starting from the youngest learners to those who are preparing to learn more structured writing formats such as a 5 paragraph essay format.
Start your Child Writing from a Young Age
To introduce your child to the idea of writing, the easiest place to begin is with a picture.
Have your child draw a picture at the top of page. Then, have them tell you about what the picture is about. As they narrate to you about the picture, write simple sentences under the picture.
When done, point to each word and read it aloud to your child so they can associate that word with the word you are saying aloud. They will associate the words to the letters on paper.
You can also take their finger and point to each word as you say it aloud. You will most likely see them begin to point to words automatically as you read. As they memorize the words, they will begin to point and say each word. It may be from memory, but that is ok and is a great start.
If your child does not like to draw, you can find a picture from a story or a magazine and have them tell you about what is happening in the picture as you write it down for them.
You would then follow the same steps of pointing at each word as you say it aloud.
Use Daily Tasks to Develop Writing Skills in your Child Naturally
You can use everyday tasks to help you develop writing skills in your child naturally. They can be quick and easy and stress free for you and your child. They can become a normal part of your daily routine.
One common way of getting your child started writing is through a shopping list. I would recommend some sort of already printed list format so that it would be less intimidating for them to write on the each line designated for a shopping list item as opposed to a blank piece of paper.
Just start out with simple words and help them with “milk” or “eggs” and you can progress from there.
This is also a great way to help you incorporate reading skills. Give them the shopping list when you’re in the store and have them check off each item as you put it in the basket.
Another easy way to include writing skills in a natural way is to have them write a sentence or two in a thank you card for a birthday or a Christmas present. If they are younger, they can just dictate the sentence or two to you or as they get older you can help them write the sentence word by word.
Retelling Stories
Another great way to develop writing skills in your child naturally is to have them get in the habit of being able to listen to a story and then retell it in their own words back to you.
You can start at a young age with a simple story, such as Sheep in a Jeep, which rhymes and occurs in a sequential order.
They then can remember the order of events that occurred in the story and dictate those order of events back to you.
These are fantastic thinking skills for your child to develop, such as –
- recalling information
- sequencing
- summarizing
- vocabulary utilization
- identifying and recalling important details.
These are all important skills for your child to have in their language development and to be able to process information and then assimilate and use and apply that information.
Being able to verbally retell the story back to you is also a skill to have in the “prewriting” process.
Once your child becomes accustomed to retelling the story back to you aloud, you can then use this skill to have them practice writing the story sentence by sentence from their memory.
It may take some coaching one sentence at a time for them to get used to going from a retelling orally to a retelling in written form. But, with consistent practice your child will soon get used to this routine and be able to do it on their own
Recalling Facts and Using Practical Writing Skills
Another way for you to develop writing skills in your child naturally is to include this writing practice into different subject areas of your home school especially in history.
Because your child is a natural storyteller from an early age and they are used to retelling stories in a sequential manner, history is a perfect way to have them recalling what they just learned in a sequential manner and retell it.
A book that has very short chapters with snippets of historical information told in a narrative and sequential style is perfect for you to use to read aloud and then have your child repeat back to you what they just learned.
Again it will take some practice for them to get accustomed to writing down the information that they can tell you orally sentence by sentence.
But soon they will be able to write those sentences down in a sequential form without your prompting and without stopping sentence by sentence and to have it take so much time.
Writing a Paragraph Naturally
Once your child gets used to recalling the facts that they’ve learned, they will begin to notice that some facts talk about one subject and that would be a paragraph, and then other facts talk about another subject and that will become another paragraph.
In this way they learn to identify subtopics and apply subject areas to individual paragraphs.
In your reading aloud you can begin to point those subtopics out and when they should include different types of information from what you have read aloud into different paragraphs.
Once they have the idea of a paragraph and can write individual paragraphs, your child can then begin learning how to write a five paragraph essay.
How to Develop Writing Skills in your Child Naturally video
How To Teach Writing in Your Homeschool Free Worksheet Packet
Using Notebooking Pages to Help you Develop Writing Skills in your Child Naturally
To help you in developing your child’s writing skills using the methods I mentioned above and in the video, I recommend using notebooking pages. They are preformatted pages with various types of line spacing, some with images and some without.
These pages may supply image boxes for your child to be able to draw what they are writing about and may have a specific theme or subject area or be generic.
They give your child a structure to follow to make it less intimidating for them to start writing something on a piece of paper instead of a large piece of paper with many blank lines.
I highly recommend these notebooking pages for all your needs! There are thousands to choose from! You also have the option of a membership where you have lifetime access to all the pages, any updates, and an option to purchase the apps allowing you to customize pages for your own use! (affil.)
Check them out with a free sample of over a thousand pages to try!
