ABSTRACT
The history of writing in the child begins long before a teacher first puts a pencil in the child's hand and shows him how to form letters. The best way to study the prehistory of writing and the various tendencies and factors involved in it is to describe the stages we observe as a child develops his ability to write and the factors that enable him to pass from one stage to another, higher stage. Does "writing" help a child, at this stage, to remember the meaningful message of a dictated sentence? We can answer "no" in almost all cases, and that is the characteristic feature of this prewriting stage. The child is interested only in "writing like grownups"; for him the act of writing is not a means of remembering, of representing some meaning, but an act that is sufficient in its own right, an act of play.
