Should I correct my 4yo, or leave her to be enthusiastic but wrong?

[Aranea]

4yo dd1 spends a lot of time at home writing long and complicated sentences. They are impenetrable to anyone else because her spelling is purely phonetic and very 'creative'! Also her letter formations are completely wrong.

I have been just leaving her to it as I don't want to spoil her pleasure in it, but will this make it harder for her in the long run? She is only in her 3rd week of Reception, and they haven't even started teaching them phonics yet.

[CybilLiberty]

Leave her

[Aranea]

you think, dittany? Can you tell this is my pfb?

[katiestar]

leave her.The children are taught to write the sounds they can hear to begin with.

[Hulababy]

I would leave her for now TBH.

My DD loves writing alsorts at that age and we left her to it, and encouraged her enthusiasm and creativity. It was never a problem and as she leearnt phonics and correct spellings at school her own writing naturally developed too.

[seeker]

I still have a sheet from our wall planner where ds, aged just 4,wrote "Urse"'Btum""Wikl" and "UmiGd" - the 4 rudest words he knew!

[nickschick]

seeker sooner those than 'nick is a bstad' written on your bathroom wall (ds2 about ds1)

[potplant]

This is exactly how the teach writing at our school They write down the sounds they can here. ie garden might be spelt Gdn - cos that's the letters they can pick out.

Leave her to it and make the most of her enjoying writing!

[southernbelle77]

Leave her! They are taught to write phonetically in reception anyway. In dd's free writing book last year she had written...

'Mi mumee has a baibee in her tumee'. It was very cute!

[TeeBee]

Another one for leave her, you can teach spelling whenever, creativity is lost so easily, especially if they get more concerned with getting their spelling correct. Let those creative juices flow!!

[Toffeepopple]

Leave her.

[sitdownpleasegeorge]

I think it is called "emergent" ??? writing or something like that and is a natural stage of progression in learning to write.

Definately no need to try and correct it.

Ds did that sort of thing in reception class in his actual school books and started copying the word signs they had labelling things in the classroom like door or mat or sink etc.

It's great that she is keen to write such long sentences.

[mimsum]

dd did this in reception - as soon as you read it out loud it made perfect sense - she's now in y2 and her spelling's brilliant - she corrects ds2 who's in y5! It will come naturally - the important thing is she's enthusiastic about writing

[primarymum]

Children generally begin to write by using the initial phoneme of a word as this is the first they hear, the next stage is to add the final phoneme and gradually they begin to add sounds into their writing that they hear. As you say, it makes perfect sense when you read it aloud! However she will gradually learn that there are "correct" ways of spelling the different sounds and she will begin to replace the incorrect version with the speller and , hey presto, she's a speller!
( well, a rather simplified version of the process, but you get the drift!)

[Builde]

Leave her! Keep her enthusiasm...it will all develop into real words and sentences.

My dd spends her whole life writing. For the whole of reception she wrote backwards stories (she is left handed) but we never corrected her. It was just lovely watching her write.

She now generally writes in the right direction. (I actually find this a bit sad!)

[JeminTheDungeon]

She is 4..let her be energetic and imaginative...it's not like she will still be writing like that when she is 12 is it?

[juliemacc]

I agree, leave her to it and let her "read" her stories to you - wouldn't you prefer it that she was using her brain rather than sitting in front of Hannah Montana?