Your best writing tips/activities/exercises for little children just learning to write please :)

[BertieBowtiesAreCool]

I am not totally home educating but we are living in a non-English speaking country and DS (age 5) is desperate to try and write. Problem is he wants to write whole little books and letters and stories, but he isn't that accomplished yet. It gets very frustrating for me because when either typing on a computer or forming letters on paper, he asks for help with every sound and then asks me to read back what he's written about every 2 letters. If I sit with him then he ends up getting frustrated and telling me "You made me do it wrong!" and if I go and do something else then he's calling me over every 5 seconds which is frustrating for me.

I feel that he would be better off practising writing individual words and working up into short sentences but he doesn't want to do that. I bought a couple of workbooks for him online, Collins ones, but they are focusing more on individual letters and they seem more of an accompaniment to stuff they do at school. That's probably helpful anyway, but I wondered if anyone can recommend either a resource I can buy/print (am in Europe so not too difficult to get stuff from UK) or just something I can do with him, because I hate to see him get so frustrated over it.

I've also got some better phonics books to help him with reading which I think will help with the writing - but just looking for something to help him at his current stage rather than trying to run before he can walk. Currently when he gets mad because he's made a mistake or I've misunderstood something then he finds it really hard to cope with, full on sobbing, ripping up or scribbling on what he's done which I think is a shame as he's actually trying really hard :(

Personally I think the issue isn't with his writing at all, but with his expectations, how he copes with making mistakes and the way he deals with his frustrations.

I had a similar issue with my 4 year old DD1. She would bite her own fingers with frustration when she couldn't do something. We had a long talk about how it takes a lot of practice to get good at things, and how making mistakes wasn't the end of the world. I didn't really think that "just" a chat would get through to her, but it really worked and she is a lot calmer now.

I don't home ed btw, I clicked on your thread because she is learning to write at the minute. :)

Well we are working on that too (you're right, it is an issue in other areas and we have had several chats! :))

If anybody knows as well, how important is pen/pencil grip? He has copied mine which is wrong (I use too many fingers) - it hasn't really hindered my writing though. I thought about those special three-sided pencils but whenever I used to use them I'd use the correct grip but then go back to my incorrect one when I used a normal round pen, which I preferred because I found the other ones uncomfortable.

I agree with wannabe. I have had that problem a great deal with one of my children. Reading, riding a bicycle, and playing a musical instrument were all things she wanted to be able to do proficiently and painlessly NOW. After a good many years her expectations became more reasonable and now at 14 she works hard at the things she wants to accomplish, accepts that there are other things she isn't willing to invest the time in mastering, and doesn't get so frustrated. I wish I had an easy answer for you!

The only thing I would say is, that I feel early academic accomplishments are no more important to a child's overall development than anything else, so I wouldn't let yourself get sucked into his frustration just because it is writing that he's trying to do. Would you be trying so hard to help him if he were unsuccessfully trying to build a Lego model? I know it is hard to watch them being so frustrated, but it is not necessarily your issue to deal with, it's his. If his frustration is affecting you then it might be better for you to step away when he is getting cross. He'll get there eventually, but not painlessly! It will do him no harm if he decides to give up for a few years and come back to it when his development has caught up with his ambition!

...having said that, would he be happy about "writing" his books by recording them onto tape instead of writing them out by hand or on the computer? if you are feeling indulgent you might transcribe them for him.

Can you scribe for him? We do quite a lot of that at various points for our children (but only when they ask, obviously)

Otherwise, have your book with you so you can read a sentence of your own book while he is working on his :) Or a journal or notebook of some kind to write in while he's working. I adore these notebooks here (made by a home educator, and she'll make bespoke ones to order, very cheerfully)

Dd used to get incredibly cross and frustrated too.

We used to make tickets for role play shows etc, shopping lists, menus etc.
We have a blackboard wall mine both like writing on and it doesn't have the same permanency so doesn't cause the upsets so much.

Oh, a blackboard sounds good. I do write things for him but he wants to do it himself, he's less interested in me doing it.

With lego I have done the same; encouraged him to try a simpler model or said "I will be able to help you at X time". He doesn't tend to smash them up though like he scribbles/tears up the writing, but perhaps that's because we tend to pick models which are within his capabilities. He did have a big set for his birthday which caused some problems but he was fine as long as I did the fiddly bits and he did the easier bits.

It's funny because with most things, e.g. walking, riding a bike, swimming etc, even fairground rides, he has been overly cautious and not willing to try it at all until one day he does it by accident and realises, oh, it's not so scary after all. It's like it's the opposite - he's so keen to be able to do it now and do it ALL. I just wanted some ideas for in-between sort of activities that aren't so stressful!

Shopping lists and tickets are good :) A friend on facebook suggested storyboards or comic strips too! Also, I seem to have the only child ever who is utterly bored by the concept of colouring in. He will draw though, so the idea of him captioning his drawings I do like.

5 is really young - where I live (not in the UK) the schools don't start writing in earnest until the year they are 6 turning 7. Maybe a long view is helpful here - DH and I both subsequently (after university) lived and worked in London for years and seemed to read and write just as well as our colleagues who'd had an almost two-year head start on us in early years education!

Seriously though, my home educated DS (aged 9) doesn't always relish the idea of writing. What I have found works is for the writing to be really, really meaningful. He loves the cartoon Calvin and Hobbes and there is a funny strip about Calvin doing a project on bats. We decided to do the same and actually find out more about them and he did lots of writing very happily.

There are some good ideas here - see www.bhg.com/health-family/school/back-to-school/ideas-for-getting-kids-to-write/

DS also writes to his cousin who lives in another city regularly (snail mail) which they both seem to enjoy and find more of a novelty than a regular e-mail.

Will watch this with interest as always looking for good ideas.

Sorry, just realised your problem isn't a child who doesn't want to write but a child who is frustrated that he can't write perfectly which is different.

In that case, I'd also focus on the scribe method (to get around the frustration) and then for the actual writing maybe use methods with big arm movements which are more natural at that age, eg writing in shaving foam, in the sand, in flour, with wipe clean boards, doing big letters out of playdough or string, etc.