Writing has always been a priority in our Catholic Homeschool from when we first started, I’ve always
provided our children with papers and writing utensils of all kinds. I have basically been very informal about it. Always making sure that the children from the moment they can grasp a spoon that they are given ample opportunities to explore with writing. Yes, I do start them out very early. It is a very natural approach to teaching the love of writing to my children, even if at the beginning the writing utensils spends most of its life drowned in drool. At first, this is a messy task but eventually my children learn that putting marker, pen, chalk, crayon, or colored pencil to paper, chalk board, dry erase board, notebook, or construction paper means we write letters and then words which together turn into sentences which eventually will make paragraphs with wonderful stories. Equally important is matching these words with pictures, beautiful colorful ones and even simple pencil drawn ones. We are constantly writing and my children don’t even notice that I am sneaking in some very important future writing skills in to them from early on.
As we started day two of this, our fifth homeschooling year, I am able to see how much this has helped my children be comfortable with writing. This year I am formalizing our writing a little more as my eldest little is in the third grade. I do realize when I was a school teacher children in the first and second grade were composing paragraphs, which is fine but I wanted to try a different approach. In my way of teaching I wanted the children always exposed to writing and drawing. As a Reading Specialist I thought it would be a great way to help children with reading comprehension in the future. I have noticed that when I read to my children they are constantly examining the pictures on the page as I read the lovely little stories they have been exposed to. This, in turn, helps them create images in their minds as they are reading to better understand and remember what was read. It is a known fact that children who write before they read become better readers than those who do not. So, to me, providing so much writing so early is a win-win situation. (This does not mean I am not providing reading opportunities either, reading to my children is equally important for both reading and writing.)
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