A trick to help children remember to write spaces between words

I have been homeschooling my kids since preschool, and a few years ago my daughter was learning to write. But she could not for the life of her remember to put spaces between the words on her paper!

I had shown her how to use her finger to create a space between words when she wrote.

It didn’t help.

I had her identify one word at a time as she wrote.

It didn’t help.

I was ready to pull my hair out. Why couldn’t she do this seemingly simple task?

But then I had another idea for how to help her.

And this idea worked.

Note: For more language and literacy ideas, see my Literacy Activities for Kids Page.

Below are two examples of what my daughter’s writing used to look like. As you can see, she was in an early developmental stage.

She wrote mostly in all capital letters.

Her spelling was phonetic and inventive.

And she didn’t put any spaces between her words.

Partly because of her inventive spelling and partly because the lack of spaces between words meant I didn’t know where one word ended and the next one began, it was very difficult for me to read her writing.

This was sad for me, because as a parent and teacher I of course wanted to demonstrate my interest in her work by reading it.

But then I had an idea to help her learn how to put spaces between her words.

And the only supply we needed – other than a pencil, of course – was a pad of sticky notes.

As she wrote her story, I asked her to write each word on a separate sticky note.

Every time she wrote a word she removed the top sticky note with her word and put it on the wall.

Little by little she created her story.

And every word was on a separate sheet of paper.

After using this technique for a little while, she went back to writing on paper. And as you can see from the example below, she actually included a lot of spaces between her words.

All in all, this trick with the sticky notes was simply a short term tool we used to help her develop the skill of putting spaces between words.

Could this trick help your child as well? Give it a try and find out!

More ways to teach language arts

More language arts activities from Gift of Curiosity:

• Language activities using miniature objects
• Sight word ball toss game
• Shaving cream writing
• Sight word magic
• Learning to alphabetize

You can find more ways to teach early language and literacy skills on my Literacy Activities for Kids page and my Letter Learning Pinterest board.