Learning 笔画笔顺

If a child can hold a writing instrument in a steady, comfortable three-finger grasp, then he is probably ready for writing. Writing Chinese characters is more challenging than writing English letters because there are so many strokes and there’s also stroke sequence to remember.  You can find more info in my article on 笔画笔顺.

Each child is different; not all children will reach the stage of readiness at the same time. Generally, children can start writing around ages 4 – 5. But don’t expect to see very nice handwriting from them. Practice makes perfect.

Pre-writing stage:

Before they learn to write words, they can learn to “write” the strokes (笔画) first. 横, 竖, 撇, 捺, 点, 钩… … The aim is for them to recognise the different types of strokes and get used to the movement of the strokes. The writing doesn’t have to be done with paper and pencil since they do not have a good control of the pencil yet.

You can let your child practise in the form of drawing/ painting.  For example, 撇 or 捺 can be drawn as part of a slide in the playground, 横折 can be part of a staircase etc.  It can even be simply just a stroke by itself. My 3 yo doesn’t mind just drawing 横, 横, 横… … lol  

My kids sometimes practise “writing” in the shower too ^.^  We have a glass panel instead of a shower curtain, and they like to “write” on it using their soapy fingers.

Ready-to-write stage:

Some suggestions for your consideration:

1. Use colourful writing instruments

All young children like pretty colours. Writing doesn’t need to be confined to using a pencil and white paper only. It can be done using colour pencils, crayons, markers etc on all kinds of materials. The area you allowed them to write on depends on the size of the writing instrument. Colourful writing instruments make writing interesting.

2. 缤纷笔顺教学

I came across this interesting way of teaching stroke sequence (笔顺) using colours of a rainbow on the internet. This teaching method is being used by some kindergartens in Malaysia. A gentleman in China has also created a 240-word 七色彩虹识字表 to help children remember the stroke sequence. The concept is basically to use the sequence of the rainbow colours to help children remember the sequence of the strokes.

Steps:
a. Ask the child to draw a rainbow on top of the writing paper (for reference purpose), using the correct colours and sequence: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and purple. He can use dark blue as indigo.

b. You can either:
  i. Print some Chinese words with inside of the character uncoloured. You can use MS WordArt to do that.

ii. Use a 描红 book, ie. a word tracing exercise book. There are dotted lines for him to follow.
iii. Simply use the colour pencils to write the words freehand.

c. Colour or write the word following the sequence of the rainbow. That means, the first stroke is red, second is yellow and so on. If the word has more than 7 colours, start with red again and continue.

d. Praise him for the beautiful writing J

3. Use boxes to perfect the writing

Chinese words are sometimes called 方块字; they fit nicely in a box. You can buy those exercise book with boxes for writing Chinese words from any bookstore, or you can simply print them yourself (can use different coloured papers ^.^). To compliment the writing, they can draw something about the word they are practising so that it’s not just a writing (习字) exercise. If your child is not fond of drawing, they can find photo or pictures related to the word and paste in the exercise book.

I've created a writing grid here. Feel free to download it for your own use.