How old would you guess this child’s writing is?

[Wordsofthewise]

Just curious and would love some outside opinions — how old would you guess a child is based on this piece of writing? Posting purely out of interest and to see if some gentle support might be needed.

It’s supposed to read:
Dear _
I hope you have a lovely life since you love me to the moon and back, I love you to Saturn and back.

6

My child was doing this in the womb so...

It could be anything between 4 and 8 depending on ability and language acquisition.
Some kids can write well really early , other can't.

What matters is if you know the child well and think they need support, then offer it. What does their teacher say?

Lovu isn't a natural phonetic attempt at love you - which makes me wonder how their phonics learning is going?

Just from my own experience, I would say this looks fairly similar to my just-turned 5 year old but I agree with @Bigearringsbigsmile and every child is different - though I know it is so easy to compare ❤️

Just finished year 1 so ages 5/6 yrs old.

My kid is nine and has scribbly hard to read writing like a doctor but is excelling at school beyond his peers. Writing isnt the be all or end all. :) Maybe just work a bit more with them 1:1 on their spellingsz

Between 4 and 6.

I have a 6 year old and some of the girls in his class were writing like this in reception, his writing was like this when he was about 5.

This suggests to me a child who has been told the spelling of ‘love’ or remember reading it and remembers it’s weird and not phonetic and has lov but can’t remember the letter on the end because it doesn’t make sense so they’ve had and picked u instead of e.

I’d guess year 1.

😂😂😂

You got there before I did!

5

In months or years?

Seriously though, all children are different but having worked in an infant school for well over 10 years, I’d say that’s fairly standard for a yr1 child.

Just finished year 2. I’ve had four kids (all boys, who appear to be slightly slower to ‘get’ handwriting than their female peers, generally) and that’s about where they’ve all been at Y2.

After Y6 you barely ever see their handwriting again so honestly I wouldn’t get hung up on it.

The writing is quite neat especially the first two lines when they would have been concentrating the most, so from that I would say about 6/7. But the spelling, especially lovu makes me think more around 5.

Ms Jemima puddle duck - that is interesting, I have a slightly younger one who is overall academically able (reading age secondary level though I have no idea how that can be accurately measured so take it with a pinch of salt) but struggles with writing, often illegible. I wondered whether your son just does less well in the 'writing' aspects in reports etc and you just sort of ignore it or whether they have other ways of assessing his writing that don't depend on how neat it is? There seems to be so much emphasis on handwriting in primary...
Sorry OP, that was a bit of a tangent. It looks neater but less accurate in terms of spelling etc than my almost 8 year old. I would wonder how long it took them eg did they write this easily and quickly or did it take a lot of effort. I don't have experience of loads of different small children's writing though.

5 or 6

5-6 from the handwriting but possibly older for knowing about Saturn?

😂😂

Thanks everyone 😊

He’s 5 and in Year 1 — the youngest in his class, so naturally I sometimes worry. He’s a big reader with a reading age above his level and did very well in his phonics screening. Writing has been more of a struggle for him (he only started using finger spaces in the last few months, as he’d often forget), but he has strong comprehension and really understands language.

He’s recently taken an interest in writing letters, so I’m thinking this might be a way to gently encourage both his fine motor skills and spelling.

Then he's doing really really well.

@Wordsofthewise
I presume that seeing as you are suggesting that some gentle help may be required, then this is a slightly older child, rather than a “look at how advanced my toddler is” moment.
I also interpreted this as someone who is not your child.
If this is correct then I’d be cautious in how you approach the issue. It’s easy to overstep and create friction if commenting on someone else’s child.
Anyway there is something about the spelling which suggests that help would probably be helpful here.

It's lovely that you are encouraging him to write over the summer. But he could do with some phonics support too. If you are not sure about this, use the internet to boost your phonics knowledge (English sites only - Read Write Inc or Letters and Sounds) You can print out a sound mat from Letters and Sounds or from Twinkl to support him and also upper and lower case letters to gain consistency here. I suggest you do not correct his spelling but question his grapheme choices - b a k t - can you hear the t in back? What other grapheme could it be? (Teacher but not early years specialist).

Ok, just read your update, and I see I misinterpreted the situation.
In this case then I wouldn’t worry about anything, I had presumed you were asking about an older child.

Handwriting is only one small element of writing teaching - the vast majority of the focus after reception should be on composition. I think sometimes when teachers say ‘writing’ is tricky/weak/a struggle parents misunderstand and think they mean handwriting when they actually mean WHAT they write (possibly as well as handwriting). In some cases children may actually be given a laptop or have their work transcribed as what is written is so much more important than handwriting.

My daughter for example just got ‘expected’ for writing in y1. I would say her writing is far less neat than her peers (and her report references that she needs to work on it) so on handwriting I’d say she’s probably working towards. But what she writes is quite good as she’s an excellent reader and has good vocab, and she understands and uses punctuation, so she’s working at the expected standard despite the fact her handwriting is a bit crap. If it was the other way round - beautifully neat but poor vocab/punctuation/spelling/sentence composition etc, it would not be at the expected standard.