Should I be correcting ds' spellings?

[saadia]

Ds1 in Reception (turned 5 in Jan) likes writing little stories and messages. He makes up the words he can't spell phonetically, so for "Mamma" he writes "Mumu", which I can see why he does, or Saturday will be spelt "Sataday".

Anyway, we do work on spellings and reading and many of these words crop up then, but, when he has spontaneously written a story or a message I don't usually correct his spellings because I don't want to dampen his enthusiasm. But I'm wondering if maybe I should - although I fear this may put him off writing things. OTOH, if I don't correct him he will learn incorrect spellings.

not necessarily in creative work but in all subjects if you correct spellings at the expense of encouraging vocab then a proportion of children (the ones who are least able to spell) will use the words they can spell and write well below their true verbal ability.

OK so he was writing about someone being in trouble and spelt it "chrubul" - I had to really bite my tongue.

My dd's (5) teacher at parents evening recommended correcting spelling mistakes which im happy to do, the occasional correction shouldnt harm a childs self esteem.