MotherofToddler, thanks for sharing the interesting detail. From my limited research, the way I understood it was that children will start to call some of their scribbles as letter and later as words and in fact, complete notes and differentiate it from artwork between 2 and 3 years of age. However, they are still not writing recognizable words. But I think you are right in that children start to write simple words such as their names probably before they start reading. I was more concerned with the huge gap in writing/ spelling ability vs reading ability in my dd. thanks.
