Your school-age kid will be learning how to write and draw in school and there are lots of ways you can help them develop these skills at home.
Here are some of our tried and tested tips:
- Encourage your child to write shopping lists or restaurant menus for pretend play
- Ask your child to make you a book, with a word on one side of the page, and a picture of that word on the other side of the page.
- Get your child to write his name and the names of other family members in greeting cards or on pictures. Once your child can use all the letters well, he will be ready for upper case and lower case letters.
- Select a few alphabet letters and move them around to make new sounds-bat, tab, abt and see which of them actually are words. Practice sounding them out letter by letter, then saying the word. If you initially use lower-case letters, there will be less risk of confusing your child with the two different letter shapes for each sound.
Read more: Promoting literacy in 5-8 year olds
