Teaching Toddlers to Write- (Part 2) Using Visuals
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A picture tells a thousand words. Toddlers and young kids are highly visual. They learn best through visualization of items. To get their ideas flowing there must be something visually attractive as a medium to stimulate their creative juices.
Enchanted Learning has picture prompt worksheets which one could download and print. I find it a good resource to get ideas on how to promote creative writing ideas to the kids.
Using such pictures as the bear with a fish you can get your child to
- Image by moonjazz via Flickr
come up with 2-3 sentences describing what they see. They will slowly need to build up their ability to describe what they have seen to a 5-6 sentences long composition which they will be expected to write independently when they reach primary 1.
This is how I went about eliciting sentences from him.
I asked him these questions.
- What do you see in this picture?
- Does it remind you of anything/anybody?
This is what Ryan said upon seeing this picture.
The bear is brown.
Ruffy is carrying a fish.
- Image via Wikipedia
* Ruffy is the name of a brown teddy bear which we have at home.
Ryan was using his prior knowledge and applied it to what he saw in the picture. I find it very important to give a child very wide exposure to different situations/circumstances so they will build up a wide and vast vocabulary which they can tap on when the need arises.
I had to help him with the spelling of the words -bear,brown,Ruffy and carrying as they were words that he is still not that familiar with. In time he should be able to spell these words independently.
We spent about 15 minutes on this exercise as it took him some time to write out the 2 sentences. Have you tried writing with your child?
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