Most children enjoy painting and drawing as through it they ware able to communicate and express themselves. The co-ordination and skills needed to help children draw and paint can be transferred to writing. This means that children need to have plenty of opportunities to paint, draw and colour.
At first young children’s drawings may look like scribbles, however this in fact is called markings and this is first step to writing. As children become more co-ordinated and their perception of the world develops, their drawings become more representational as well as more detailed. Once children have gained this co-ordination and also understand that symbols can have meaning, they will be ready to start recording. As with reading, early years settings can give children the desire to record. The word ‘record’ is being used rather than writing as , at first, children should be given opportunities simply to make marks and have a go at ‘writing’ for themselves. This is often called emergent writing.
A great tool for those very first scribbles are large chunky pencils. The ones where they wrap their fingers altogether around the pencil. Pencils with vibrant colours encourage more scribbles and fun in seeing what they have drawn. Jumbo pencils are perfect for this they have a great little bump on ones side that stop the pencils from rolling off the table.
