I started teaching my child to read when she was 12 months old. Now at 19 months she knows a huge number of words, I have started teaching her the phonetic alphabet and she points to the correct word almost every time I ask her. At the same age (12 months) she started to scribble with crayons and kokis. Around the same time as she began to show us she could read she also began to “draw” better as in she held the kokis/pen better, drew more controlled lines and could draw circle shapes. From what I have learnt about early art and scribbling it generally follows a pattern that about now a child will start talking about what they are drawing even if it does not look like anything - so if they tell you it is a tree while they draw it then they are imagining that they are drawing a tree.
My daughter does not do this. She says the words that she most likes to read and it is though she is pretending to write them - in fact she has drawn a few letters, but I am unsure whether that is just by chance (M when saying Mummy for example - she does not have enough fine motor control to repeat it though) If she is not satisfied she gives me the pen and asks me to write the words for her. I do often both draw the picture and write the word but she seems more comfortable with the written words.
Is this normal for a 19 month old that is learning to read? What have other parents noticed with their children? Should I stimulate more visual art or continue doing both or just leave her to what she seems to want?
