Writing Notebooks for Youngsters

My latest blog on Plugged in Parents is about encouraging writing with your young children using Writer's Notebooks.  If you have school-aged children, you may have seen them before...did you ever think about getting one started for your pre-schooler?

Here's a snippet about how my four year old uses his notebooks.

I’ve let him pick out his notebook, he has a Toy Story one, and two different composition notebooks he likes to use.  If you plan on trying a notebook at home, make sure your child is involved in the process.  Allow them to choose a notebook and let them decorate it with stickers or drawings to really make it personal.  Also, this should be fun, so give your child an opportunity to experiment with a variety of writing tools: pencils, crayons, markers, colored pencils, and fancy pens. That freedom gives way to creativity and expression.

He loves tracing right now, so I might write his “big name” and have him trace the letters.  Some days we talk about shapes, I draw a shape and he traces it and then colors it.  Some nights, I get special requests, like draw the Mickey Mouse Choo-Choo Express Train, so I draw and he colors.  It isn’t always structured like that though; sometimes he just wants to draw.  He likes drawing pictures of people he knows, and on a page that may look like just scribbles, he can tell you exactly what everything means.

If you want to read more from my original post click here!