You’ve got mail!

How excited do our children get when they receive mail. This term most of the Prep classrooms around Australia will be focussing on the genre of Letter writing. It got me thinking about what parents can do for their child to encourage letter writing for not only Prep children but for pre writing children (3-5) and older children.

For many years I have told parents the first step in their child enjoying and being successful in writing anything is if they see themselves as a writer. Children have to see themselves as a writer in order to become confident writers. Once they have this mindset it’s important to keep the activities meaningful and include real life situations. This is where Letter writing comes into play. It is the perfect medium to start using for real life situations. There are many letters that can be written that would interest children of all ages.

• Letters to Santa or the Easter Bunny
• Letters to Grandparents, Aunties or Uncles
• Letters to friends at school
• Letters to make believe characters

The ultimate goal for parents (and teachers) is to keep the excitement and confidence alive. Children need to see that writing is a part of everyday life.

Steps to writing

• 1st step is to come up with the idea

• 2nd step is to come up with the right words

• And 3rd is the mechanics of letter formation, spelling, word spacing and page layout

Having the confidence to use made up spelling is great in the early stages as it relieves the mechanics of actually writing (which can be strenuous in the beginning) and focuses more on getting their ideas onto paper.

Over the last few weeks Little Toy Lane has had many requests for letter writing ideas for children and classrooms. Some of our products that we have to encourage writing skills include:

https://littletoylane.com.au/products/dear-little-designs-diaries

https://littletoylane.com.au/products/mail-box-with-writing-kit

https://littletoylane.com.au/products/letters-to-santa

https://littletoylane.com.au/products/melissa-doug-wooden-story-blocks

https://littletoylane.com.au/products/letterbox-with-writing-kit