A Technique for Early Reading: Skywriting

For ages: 3 months - kindergarten

This all started with laziness when Erik was an infant, just a few months old. Erik wasn’t a good sleeper and he co-slept in our bed. So in the morning, I was super sleepy after waking up so many times to feed and soothe him back to sleep. To buy myself extra horizontal time with my eyes closed, I’d make shapes with my hands while we both laid on our backs and looked up at the ceiling. Now, I know this sounds dumb, but I really believe that this planted the seed for him. He watched intently as I used my hands to make very basic shapes, like circles and triangles. I made letter shapes like L and T. I slowly counted my fingers up and down. He was fascinated by the movement and the changing scenes. I believe he was seeing patterns, the fundamentals of math.

This basic movement of fingers in the air evolved as Erik got older into something that I’ve heard called “skywriting” in education. By age 1, I was using my index finger to trace ABCs in the air and speaking them aloud as Erik watched. I did not know at the time that this type of skywriting technique is actually taught and used in kindergarten classes. Another time I traced letters was during playtime in our backyard sandbox. He was reading “to”, “the”, and other 2-letter and 3-letter words by age 1 ½.

By age 2 ½, I really noticed that it made an impression because Erik could read. He was reading 3-letter and 4-letter words. Also something peculiar was his index finger, it was constantly drawing/tracing letters in the air. He did it while he talked. I have pictures of him skywriting while drinking a juice box at Disneyland!