Exposing children to letters at an early age favors the learning of spelling

Adults possess several skills that are common to them and that seem easy enough to perform thanks to the degree of internalization they have. However, this makes us forget how difficult it was to learn these skills and reach the level of mastery that is currently available. A good example is reading and orthography, two practices that are carried out on a daily basis but are not easy to assimilate at the beginning.

For this reason, any method that helps the child learn to master the writing or the reading should be well received at home to favor the little ones. Now, a new study conducted by the University of St. Louis It proposes to the parents to expose the youngest to the letters at an early age to increase the possibilities of this learning.

Mastery of forms

Those responsible for this investigation brought together 179 children between 3 and 5 years old. These members were divided into two groups, one of them was exposed to different letters and phrases at these ages. After the passing of the years, data of these participants was collected again. The objective was to verify if these activities had favored learning to read and writing.

The results showed that children who had been exposed to the letters, had a greater ease when learning to write. The researchers They point out that this is because these children identified the strokes and pairing of these symbols before, so it was easier to reproduce them on paper and form words with them.

Something that also allowed them to master reading before, something that was also due to a greater facility to recognize the symbols of the letters to have been exposed before them. "Our results show that children begin to learn about the stats of written language, for example, about which letters appear together frequently and which letters appear together less frequently, before learning the way in which letters represent the sounds of a language ", explains Rebecca Treiman, co-author of this work.

Graphomotor

In addition to exposure to letters at an early age, parents can also help their children practice spelling through exercises that favor graphomotor skills. These are some ideas for this:

Exercises for hands:

- Play palms trying to follow a rhythm.

- Perform balance exercises with the palm of your hand.

- Make gestures depending on the lyrics of a song.

- Imitate with your hands movements of animals such as the claw of a lion.

Exercises for the fingers:

- Open and close the fingers of the hand, first simultaneously, then alternating them. Go increasing speed.

- Join and separate the fingers, first freely, then following
orders.

- Touch each finger with the thumb of the corresponding hand, increasing the speed.

- With your hand closed, take your fingers one after the other, starting with the little finger.

- Screw and unscrew lids, cans, nuts ...

- Button and undo buttons.

- Tying and untying ties.

- Fit and disengage objects.

- Modeling with plasticine balls.

Damián Montero