Before Reading Begins: How Pre-k Children Build the Foundations for Literacy

As I walk through the hallways and classrooms of our Early School, I am reminded every day that learning to read and write begins long before a child picks up a book and reads the words on a page or sits down to write a recognizable letter.

I see our youngest children experimenting with crayons and paint, applying different pressure and moving the tools in different directions. Through this, they are discovering that their movements leave marks on paper. I hear teachers helping children find the words to explain an idea, and I watch older children create signs for their pretend stores or proudly tell the stories behind their drawings. Outside, children collect leaves, investigate what they find, and share their discoveries with friends.

There is so much learning happening in these moments. And I wonder whether we, as adults, always recognize just how important these experiences are.

Our Early School children range in age from two to five. That is a tremendous period of growth and development. A two-year-old and a five-year-old are in very different places, and even children of the same age develop skills at different rates. What they have in common is that they are building the foundations for future learning every day, often in ways that may not look like traditional reading and writing.

As parents, we naturally want our children to succeed. We want them to feel confident, to be ready for what comes next, and to have the skills they need when they enter kindergarten. But here is something I want every Early School family to know: The work children do before they can read and write independently is not time spent waiting for the real learning to begin. It is the learning.

When we think about early literacy, we often focus on the things we can easily see, such as recognizing letters, writing a name, or reading a word. But those accomplishments rest on a much bigger foundation.

Children need to hear new words, ask questions, listen to others, and practice putting their own thoughts into words. They need to develop strong oral language. These everyday conversations help build the vocabulary and understanding they will eventually use when they read and write.

They also need to develop phonological awareness, which is the ability to hear and notice the sounds in spoken language. Singing songs, enjoying rhymes, and clapping out the syllables in a friend’s name may seem like simple fun, but these experiences help children become aware of how language sounds before they connect those sounds to letters.

There is also a physical side to learning to write. Children need to strengthen their hands and fingers, develop control over their movements, and learn to coordinate both sides of their bodies. Being able to use both hands simultaneously is critical in writing; one hand holds the paper steady while the other makes marks. Play-Doh, painting, puzzles, and other hands-on experiences help children develop these abilities naturally.

When children share their own stories or decide how they want to plan a game, they are learning to organize their thoughts and communicate meaning. These are important skills for both reading comprehension and written expression.

These are not things that we squeeze in before the real learning begins. They are the building blocks of literacy. Our goal is to help children build the skills they need so that, when formal instruction comes, they have a strong foundation to build on.

Think about a two-year-old who picks up a crayon and moves it back and forth across a piece of paper. To an adult, it may look like random scribbles. But that child is exploring how a tool works, learning that their movements leave a mark, and discovering that they can make something happen on the page all while receiving important sensory input for their brains.

As children grow, the marks they make on paper become more intentional. A child might draw a series of circles and lines and announce that it is a picture of their family. Another might fill a page with marks and explain that it is a shopping list or a letter to grandma.

These children may not yet be writing letters or words in a conventional way, but they are learning something essential: marks on paper can carry meaning.

This is called emergent writing. It is the gradual process through which children discover what writing is and how it works. Their early efforts may include scribbles, dots, lines, drawings, pretend letters, or combinations of pictures and marks. Over time, these marks become more controlled and begin to resemble letters. Children start connecting letters to the sounds they hear in words and eventually use writing to communicate their own ideas.

The path looks different for every child. Some children develop these skills early, and that is wonderful. Others are busy developing the language, sound awareness, coordination, and other foundational skills they need. Children develop at different rates, and one child’s progress is not a measuring stick for another’s.

I worry that when parents hear about what another child can do, they sometimes feel pressure to speed things up for their own children. My advice? Please don’t let the mom on the park bench determine what your child should be doing. You chose Seven Hills for a reason. You trust our teachers to understand young children, to know what they are working toward, and to recognize the skills each child is developing. Let us be your guides and your resources. We are here to partner with you.

As I continue walking through our hallways and classrooms, I will continue to be reminded that the work of early childhood education is sometimes easy to overlook precisely because it looks so much like childhood.

It looks like scribbling, painting, building, pretending, talking, exploring outside, and asking a thousand questions. It looks like children learning to listen to one another, explain their thinking, solve problems, and make sense of the world around them. It looks like play.

And as Fred Rogers once said, “Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”

The goal isn’t to have the earliest reader or the neatest writer in the class. The goal is to help every child build the foundation to become a confident, capable reader and writer in time.

And sometimes, the best thing we can do for our children is to slow down, trust their teachers, and let them be two, three, four, or five.