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Writing Practices - Families of PreK Children

Writing Practices - Families of PreK Children

A young child writing in a notebook at a white desk

Why encourage your prekindergartener to write? 

When you help your child to write, he or she learns about sounds within words and how letters match the sounds.

How To Support Writing at Home

Write for meaning.

Make writing exploration meaningful.

  • If your child is pretending to be a vet with his or her stuffed animals, offer your child paper to write a prescription.
  • When you are making your grocery list, let your child make his or her own list, too.
  • Encourage your child to write his or her name on drawings.
  • Have your child tell a story while you write it down.
  • Ask your child to pick a picture from a book or magazine and write about what he or she sees.

Focus more on the process.

Focus less on the product.

  • Allow your child to write without being concerned about his or her handwriting.
  • Help your child focus on putting ideas on paper, instead of forming letters or spelling words correctly.

Provide writing materials.

Give your child pens, pencils, paper, notepads, and/or a journal.

  • Share junk mail, catalogs, and old magazines for your child to write on.
  • Encourage your child to keep a journal.
  • Let your child take a journal when you take them on walks and encourage them to share what they write.
  • Give your child time to stop and write or draw what he or she sees or feels.
  • “Read” the journal together when you get home.

Understand emergent writing skills.

The start of writing skills.

  • First: Scribbling, drawing, or mimicking “grown-up” writing.
  • Next: Copying words from books, posters, or cereal boxes, showing knowledge of letter formation and the concept of words.
  • And then: Drawing and writing strings of random letters to convey a message.
  • Finally: Matching letters to their sounds to write words.

For more information:

The contents of this page were developed for the Michigan Department of Education under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education through the Office of Program and Grantee Support Services (PGSS) within the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE), by the Region 8 Comprehensive Center at ICF under Award #S283B190013 in September 2021. This contains resources that are provided for the reader’s convenience. These materials may contain the views and recommendations of various subject matter experts as well as hypertext links, contact addresses, and websites to information created and maintained by other public and private organizations. The U.S. Department of Education does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of any outside information included in these materials. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the positions or policies of the U.S. Department of Education. No official endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education of any product, commodity, service, enterprise, curriculum, or program of instruction mentioned on this page is intended or should be inferred.