When Do Kids Start Writing? What I Tell Parents as a Teacher

What a magical moment when you see your child’s scribbles become something more: a letter or even two. That’s the moment you realize all those nursery rhymes you and your little one have listened to nonstop, helping them identify some letters. In this article, we hope to provide some tips and tricks for when your child begins to write. We plan to help you help your child foster early writing skills, define some developmental milestones, and address challenges your child may face and how to overcome them. We want to make sure your child’s writing experience becomes a positive way to express themselves and their thoughts. Lastly, we want to make sure you, as a parent, feel confident in assisting your child by encouraging and building a strong foundation for their future academic success. 

What Are The Early Writing Signs?

Once you see your child pick up that crayon, scribble, and draw, that’s your sign to start cultivating their motor skills! It may seem silly to us, but those scribbles represent their development of motor skills and creativity. We want to encourage them to color, draw, scribble, and make incoherent drawings because this is a form of learning for them. Something I love to do with some of my students is provide lots of crayons and paper and let them have some drawing time. I will sit next to them and do the same. Doing it together allows for more engagement based on my teaching experience.  

Letter Recognition

This is where you’ll see all those letter workbooks in your Amazon account floating around, reminding you, “Hey, your child is starting to recognize letters!” This is when you see your child’s gears turning as they begin to recognize and name letters, often ones they’re exposed to in their environment. I recommend fun activities such as alphabet games and letter-based activities: 

• Alphabet Scavenger Hunt: This is an interactive activity that will have your child on a fun moving journey around the house to find notecards with letters from the alphabet. 

• Playdough Letters: Playdough letters are a great way for your child to practice with their hands creating letters after some demonstration from you. 

• Alphabet Art Projects: This activity includes paper and crayons and fun alphabet practice where you help your child draw some letters. 

Developmental Milestones

As a parent, you must be aware of your child’s goals and targets for their progress. Although every child learns differently at a different pace, that said, use this as a guide to set some goals for your child. 

• Age 2-3: Scribbling and Fine Motor Skills

We discussed the very exciting and crucial toddler scribbling. This is incredibly important because it’s the start of your child’s scribbles transitioning to more intentional marks. This is when I’ve seen kids actually begin to draw more specific things and grip their utensils more intentionally. To help your child hone in on those fine motor skills, I recommend having your child trace lines and shapes to practice more intentional drawing. It won’t be perfect, and that’s okay; have them keep practicing! 

• Age 3-4: Print Awareness and Early Letter Formation

This is the stage where your child becomes more aware of print, and they can start to understand words that have meanings such as “go.” At this point, you will start to see your child try to write letters they know based on exposure. When they’re first trying, they may look like scribbles, but with some consistent practice and constant exposure to writing materials, they will begin to look like the letters we see, know, and love. 

• Age 4-5: Basic Letter Writing and Name Recognition

This is what I believe to be the fun stage, this is when I’ve seen my own students struggle and preserve with practice and begin to write some simple letters and even words! Many of my students had been able to write their names by this point and practiced writing letters in capital and lowercase letters. They will get frustrated, but with the right encouragement from you, they will find excitement in being able to write, and so will you! 

• Age 5-6: Writing Simple Words and Sentences

At this point, your child will be able to confidently write simple words and begin forming simple sentences! This is another exciting milestone that requires your support to help them keep practicing. Activities such as labeling objects around the house can be a great way for your child to practice writing from their daily surroundings. It can also help to have your child tap into their creative side by creating their own short stories to the best of their ability. 

Language Skills

It’s important to highlight the connection between language development and writing skills. Most of the students that I’ve noticed can get over their writing blocks or anxieties and have so much to say. They have a very developed vocabulary from communicating so much, and asking so many questions, and I’ve seen how this plays a pivotal role in their writing confidence and capabilities. That said, as a parent, reading and verbal communication are absolutely essential for your child’s writing proficiency. 

Tips to Support Early Writing

Some tips I recommend as an educator would be to: 

• Provide Writing Materials: What I mean by this is having various writing materials to entice your child. If they see lots of colors of crayons, markers, colored pencils, etc, they will feel more excited to write. 
• Create a Writing-Friendly Environment: It’s essential to create a welcoming environment, maybe create a designated space for writing activities. You could have writing become a part of the daily routine that’s fun with words of the day and fun writing activities. 
• Encourage Storytelling and Imaginative Play: We want to make sure we’re promoting your child’s creative side. This can be done by encouraging storytelling and imaginative play, make-believe, and pretend. This kind of activity allows your child to use their imagination and things they’ve learned to create complex characters which allows for rich writing over time. 
• Read Together Regularly: As I mentioned before, language is incredibly important for children’s writing development. It’s useful to create a daily reading routine so you can start early promoting vocab development and comprehension. These skills are unbelievably important for writing. 

Common Challenges and Solutions

Something I’ve seen time and time again is kids getting frustrated with writing, whether they're overwhelmed by it or their handwriting is causing a problem in school, and you’ll always hear the same thing– I hate writing. My job as an educator is to make sure kids don’t hate anything in academia; they give everything a chance because 10 times out of 10, they don’t hate it, they’re afraid of it. 

• Writing Frustration: To help deal with writing frustration, it helps to make writing fun, stress-free, and activity-based. Writing shouldn’t be this daunting thing that a child can or cannot do. So make it fun, have your child write about whatever they want, and go from there. 

• Delayed Writing Skills: Here are some signs of delayed writing skills, 
  • Limited letter recognition, unable to recognize or name letters despite constant practice. 
  • Poor Fine Motor Skills: Has a lot of trouble holding a pencil, crayon etc. or has a very shaky hand, or gets overly frustrated doing writing tasks. 
  • Lack of Print Awareness: Doesn’t understand that writing conveys meaning and language. 
  • Struggles with Sequencing Stories: When they struggle to organize their thoughts in the correct sequence in a story or struggle to structure sentences properly.  
    
    

If you feel your child may be struggling with any of these signs, it’s useful to take proactive steps by seeking help from educators, whether that be their teacher at school or Genie Academy. 

Implement Supportive Strategies at Home:

There are many ways to support your child at home if they’re struggling a lot.

• Provide Additional Practice: Incorporate writing exercises into daily routines, focusing on activities that strengthen fine motor skills and letter recognition.
• Use Assistive Tools: Utilize tools like pencil grips, specialized paper, or writing apps designed to make writing easier and more engaging.
• Track Improvements: Just by using the same notebook, you can track your child’s progress and identify areas in which they still need extra support. 
• Positive Reinforcement: Encourage and celebrate small achievements to build your child’s confidence and reduce anxiety related to writing tasks.
  
  

Try Genie Academy for Extra Support

Genie Academy is a wonderful resource that provides customizable curriculums for your child’s pace. Not only does Genie Academy provide workbooks on how to write the alphabet in both capital and lowercase letters, but they also teach phonics and spelling. Beyond writing, Genie also provides tutoring in core subjects such as reading, math, and abacus, ensuring a well-rounded foundation for academic success. With a positive and engaging learning environment, your child will stay motivated and excited to learn. Genie Academy has 6 locations in New Jersey – Plainsboro, East Brunswick, South Brunswick, Hillsborough, South Plainfield, and Marlboro.

Conclusion

We want our kids to succeed; we want them to feel supported in their writing development early on. In this article, we provided signs to look for in early writing, developmental milestones, tips to support your child, common challenges and solutions, and support at home and through Genie Academy. When I see my students write with joy, I know that they are on the right track because confidence will come soon after. If you want to help your child write first, create an environment that fosters creativity and confidence, which, in turn, will make learning effective and engaging. If you need help, Genie Academy is always here to help.