Maria Montessori spoke of spontaneous writing. Children of preschool age, from one day to the next, spontaneously started writing. The children were so fired up about it that they wrote everywhere! On the walls, on the table, on anything the children could put their little hands on. Finally, they were presented with paper. Yay!
Well, I have paper at my house. And my children write all the time! It wasn’t so spontaneous, it has been a gradual thing, from writing a few letters to writing their names. Now they write cards, lists of all sorts, recipes and letters to their family and friends. My four-year-old son usually has a small, “far-out” description written at the bottom of practically all his drawings. Why do they like writing so much? Well for starters, I hardly ever correct them. Still, their spelling continually improves. They are surrounded by words and they read all the time, they copy words from books and cards, and so naturally patterns are settling into their memories. If they ask me how to spell something, I tell them by helping them sound it out, and further explain when the sounds and the letters don’t coordinate, as is the case with silent letters, or the word “tough”. But if they don’t ask, I rarely say anything, and they sound it out themselves. They have also learned a few tricks from the videos on the website “Between the Lions” that put grammar rules to song – sesame street style.
A lot the time the words they write are spelled phonetically, with lots consonants – mostly consonants at first. So one day, to hint at vowels more, I introduced the concept of syllables. We counted beats by clapping our hands for each syllable. And with that I re-introduced the vowels, and explained that you need at least one vowel in each syllable. We wrote out some words, circled the syllables with one color, and circled the vowels with another. We did that until they got bored and we moved on with our day. I didn’t point any “lack of vowels” in their next writing endeavors, and just as before, I let things happen and let my children’s little minds work and make the connections themselves.
In Jane Healey’s Your Child’s Growing Mind, any worries I might have had regarding time frames were put to ease. She explains
that every brain is different, and developmental guidelines are just that, guidelines. I know some families whose children were late readers, and they unblocked at about 8 years old and just flew from there. Writing takes a certain amount of brain development and fine motor skills. Building blocks, puzzles, and lacing beads are some examples of what a child can do to lay down the neural foundation needed for writing. Montessori devised clever sand-paper letters for tracing with the index finger. The child sounds the letter as he gently traces it, engaging many parts of his brain simultaneously. A child can also draw the letters in the sand with his finger or a stick, imitating mommy or daddy’s letter or word right beside him. We often go back to the sand-paper letters when they ask us how to write a letter in particular. To montessori, this replaces repetitiously writing the same letter on lined paper.
What’s most important is to keep it fun. Keep the love alive. If I spent my time correcting my children’s spelling, they might soon be discouraged and stop, leaving me with nothing to correct. A common advice you will find in many forward thinking approaches regarding writing is to not greet your little one’s fresh enthusiasm with spelling corrections. Personally, I am so happy that they genuinely enjoy writing, that I find ways to discreetly help here and there without impeding the adventure that they are so purposefully embarked on.
I imagine writing stories will come soon. To inspire them, maybe I could pull out the old “tell me the story” game where we glued an image from a magazine onto a piece of paper, and my child would dictate me the story to accompany the image. This time they could write it themselves. Initially, they got so lit up when they realized that their words were being written down, and could be re-read by anyone. I carried this over to their drawings, asking “Tell me about your drawing?” which I would then write at the bottom of the page. A few times my daughter got carried away telling me “It jumps, and it twirls!” looking to the page intently as I wrote it down. “And it slides and turns and skips and and and…”
Word up y’all!
