Handwriting Skills in Kindergarten

Young writers progress through three stages: emergent, beginning, and fluent. Discover ways to encourage your child’s journey to writing easily and well.

What You Need to Know

Emergent readers and writers understand the role of printed text, and they start transitioning from pretend scribbles into simulated, simple sentence structures. Next, children learn to write common words and move toward sentences that develop a story. Later on, reading and writing becomes automatic and organized.

How You Can Help

To launch your child into the phases, create ways to practice the emergent skills at home—and make them fun!

1. Scribbling. Don’t force recognizable letter formation. Instead, encourage scribbling that mimics the rapid-paced fluency of adults. Large utensils and surfaces make it fun. For example, use large paintbrushes to decorate the sidewalk around your house. Likewise, sidewalk chalk on chalkboard easels inside your home creates a satisfying, fluid feeling.
2. Interactive. Write stories with your child. You print the main sentence structure, and your child fills in a picture, scribble, or words. For example, “The neighbors have three (cats). They chase the (rats). Afterwards, they look happy and (fat).
3. Names. Print your child’s name in large, bold font and make many copies. Encourage your child to trace the letters with different media—crayons one day, markers another, paint, and so on. Hang the variations in a gallery of rainbow progress.

For more information, please see the full article at:

http://www.education.com/reference/article/three-stages-reading-writing/