Toddlers (12 - 33 months)
Your toddler is getting himself and the muscles in his hands and fingers ready for writing when he squeezes a soft ball, pokes and pinches play dough, tries to button his jacket, or spreads his own peanut butter and jelly. He is learning about writing when he watches you write, sees words all around him, and makes scribbles of his own. Be excited about your toddler’s interest in words and let him scribble away until it is his idea to learn to write actual letters.
Right now, writing and drawing are the same things to your toddler. As he gets older, he’ll begin to understand that the marks he makes on paper can mean something to someone else. By the time he’s a preschooler, he’ll begin to draw with purpose and to realize the differences in the meanings of pictures and words. Expressing himself on paper with crayons or markers gives your toddler the opportunity to create something using the colors he likes and working in his own way.
For most toddlers, the process is more important than the final product. For example, your toddler might hold a crayon and make a series of dots while saying, “Hop, bunny. Hop, hop, hop.” He might carefully draw a few squiggles that look sort of like a person and then scribble out his whole drawing as he tells you, “It’s raining really, really hard.” Or he might simply enjoy experimenting with different kinds of marks—without meaning to represent an object, tell a story, or create a pleasing picture.
By making writing and drawing something that happens in your home every day, you are getting your toddler ready to develop the skills he’ll use later to become a writer and a reader.