Introducing Your Child to the Arts: Words to Stories (continued)

Nurture your child’s interest in writing by providing appropriate writing materials. Make sure that your child has access to the tools of the trade: paper, pencils, and pens. As their skills develop, computers or typewriters become increasingly useful. It is also helpful to designate a special place for writing that has adequate space and is comfortable and quiet. You can make writing special by allowing your child to use your desk, your typewriter or computer, or just your favorite pen.

It’s essential that children learn that it takes time to develop ideas and compose sentences. Let them enjoy the process and play with different versions. Remember that your child’s daydreaming, make-believe adventures, and imaginary journeys could be the basis for future writing and storytelling.

Encourage and support your child’s efforts in writing:

• Writing can begin with storytelling and the understanding of the concepts of beginning, middle, and end. Use sequencing cards to encourage order and plot. Have your child make up a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Record your child’s thoughts in his or her own words. Then re-read the story and make changes suggested by your child—an introduction to the process of editing. Have your child add illustrations to the text to help tell the story, creating a simple picture book.
• Build on your child’s interests. Select a favorite book and then borrow or purchase other books by the same author. Help your child explore the idea of being an author or illustrator. If Eric Carle is a favorite, ask your child, “What can we learn about Eric Carle by reading his books?” “Why do you think he chose to write about animals, bugs, and butterflies?”
• Encourage your child to think as an author and ponder what it would be like to be a writer.
• Journal writing is a wonderful early step. Buy a journal with plain pages and encourage your child to fill it with words and
  pictures. Have your child “read” his or her stories after writing. Even though a very young child may not be able to write a single recognizable word, it is important that he or she begins to associate written marks with the spoken word as a means of communicating ideas to other people.

Encouraging your child to write is a delicate matter. Many children react to pressure by withdrawing, in this instance, avoiding writing because they are afraid of making mistakes such as spelling errors. Adults can reassure children by relaxing rules of grammar and spelling and stressing plot, characters, and settings. Children will write a lot only if they enjoy it!

Some children in elementary school eagerly pick up pencil and paper to create stories and poems. For these children, it is probably best not to meddle. Children will spend more time writing if they feel that it is really their own. If they do ask for help, or you see that they are running out of inspiration, here are a few ideas you could try:

• Riddles. Ask your child to describe something without revealing what the thing is. For example: “I have four legs but I don’t walk. What am I?” (A chair.) Writing riddles improves children’s ability to describe accurately.
• First sentences. Help your child start a story by providing a first sentence that sets up a strange or intriguing situation. For example: “When we reached the mountaintop, we found a rope hanging from the sky.”
• Photostories. Suggest that children flip through a magazine until they find an interesting photograph. Then, have them write a story that describes what happened before, during, and after the photograph was taken. This idea also works well with paintings and family photographs, particularly if they are about unfamiliar people or places.
• Poetry. Poetry has many of the verbal elements children love—rhyme, rhythm, alliteration. Pick a subject—a person, an
  animal—and compose a poem together, letting your child make the rhymes, similes, and verse length.

Inventive Spelling

As young children begin to experiment with writing, there is little resemblance between their work and the basic standards that frame formal writing—spelling, grammar, and punctuation. While there are different perspectives about the use of these standards, there is general consensus that early writing should be about the process of expressing ideas rather than an emphasis on the rules associated with these standards. Inventive spelling is the term used for early writing where children apply basic knowledge of letter sounds and words from memory to represent their ideas through symbols.