It's all in the name : early writing: from imitating print to phonetic writing

Children as young as three years old succeed in imitating adult writing. About a hundred years ago, Alexander Luria’s case studies suggested that to denote meaning 6-year-olds’ scribbles include figurative devices such as color or number: a black scribble for ‘smoke’ and four small strokes to represent four little chicks. In our literate society, children as young as four years old use symbols such as letters and numbers. Writing begins with emotionally charged words: the child’s own name or mama. Letters from those words influence how children write unknown words. They compose letter strings (randomly ordered symbols) with letters from these names. Surprisingly name letters also give the initial impetus to phonetic spelling. When children begin to invent partly correct spellings, they start with representing the first letter of their proper name phonetically.