Writing Before Reading

Teaching your child to read requires patience, perseverance, and much effort. But it is very rewarding if your child can read at a much earlier stage than other kids. I began teaching my daughter to read when she was only a few months old, and she could read at the age of three (an average child in the United States begins to read at the age of five or six).

Teaching a child to read comes in many stages, and the last stage prior to reading is the writing stage.

Writing, involving the use of voluntary muscles, is a physical skill that improves with more practice and encouragement from parents. At the end of the second year or the beginning of the third year, wrist and finger movement develops, and by the middle or the end of the third year, your child may have mastered the skill of holding a pencil between finger and thumb. Some children can draw crude pictures of human figures; others may begin to copy their own names.

To help your child achieve a satisfactory running hand is a more realistic goal than to train him or her to become  calligrapher. Good handwriting, however, should be duly encouraged: after all, attractive handwriting is often a joy to behold as well as a pleasure to produce. Moreover, an efficient mastery of handwriting would enable subsequent fluent written communication. It is important that there should be a sensible and consistent policy for the teaching of handwriting.

Teach and encourage your child to do the following to improve his or her motor skills:

Cutting along a line with a pair of scissors.

Lacing shoes.

Stacking a series of blocks.

Buttoning clothes.

Brushing teeth.

Ensure your child’s correct writing posture:

Sit with both feet firmly on the floor.

Pull up the trunk and lean slightly forward.

Rest the right forearm on the table.

Use left hand to steady the paper with the index finger and thumb on the left edge of the paper.

Place the paper to the right of the writer and then lightly tilt it to the left.

Relax your child’s writing hold:

Hold the pencil between the thumb and index finger resting it on the second finger.

Do not bend in the first joint of the index finger to avoid pressing the pencil.

Encourage your child to relax rather than demand him or her not to grip firmly.

Teach your child to write the alphabets.

Make sure your child knows the letter, its shape, and sound before teaching him or her to write.

Ask your child to say the name and the sound of the letters while making the correct sequence of strokes.

Teach your child what to say when he or she is writing the letter, for example, “Pee says puh for puppy: down the stem, up and round for the puppy.”

Emphasize the importance of the sequence of strokes.

Start and finish each line with written examples for over-writing.

Teach your child the lower case first before proceeding to the upper case.

Make your child “talk through” while writing and spelling, for example, saying the word and sounds of syllables and letter strings.

Teach your child to copy his or her  own name.

Use a felt pen to write his or her name.

Indicate the sequence and the direction of the strokes.

Ask your child to write over the letters of his or her name, or trace them on a piece of tracing paper.

When your child has finished a painting or drawing, ask your child to print his or her name from a copy of your child’s names.

Ask your child to put titles on the pictures he or she has drawn. Let your child tell you about the pictures, or suggest short and appropriate titles for them. Write titles with a felt pen for over-writing, tracing, and copying.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau