List of Skills by Age
1-2 Months
2-4 Months
4-6 Months
6-8 Months
8-10 Months
10-12 Months
Attempts to imitate adult marks on paper by banging dots or making short marks
12-15 Months
15-18 Months
Spontaneously scribbles on paper (or other surface) - no understanding of true writing
18-21 Months
Makes marks on paper with no organization
Experiments with vertical and horizontal straight lines-- alone, next to, or on top of other lines
Produces writing lines differently than drawing lines
21-24 Months
Makes large continuous circular scribbles, with occasional straight lines
24-27 Months
27-30 Months
Creates separated, tight scribble marks
30-33 Months
Zigzag scribbles are added to loops
33-36 Months
Distinguishes writing from drawing
Draws recognizable forms (e.g., face, flower)
Makes marks to create writing, explains what the writing “says”
Attempts to make first letter of own name, but the appearance is unconventional
36-42 Months
Organizes messages or stories written with scribble writing with adult assistance
Dictates words for the adult to write down
Uses 3 fingers to hold pencil to write
42-48 Months
Memorizes the letters in own name and tries to write them
Uses drawing to stand for writing to communicate a message
48-54 Months
Differentiates between letters and numbers
Draws a person with a head and at least 6 features
Draws simple pictures to tell a story
Attempts to write letter-like forms in a sequence to write a message
54-60 Months
Replaces scribbles with letter approximations and actual letters in a message or story
Writing formats differ for different purposes (e.g., list, card, story)
 North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 2015
©2015 by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.