Expert answer
Handwriting, spelling, and typing are important for young children for a number of reasons. One way of thinking about this is the effect of handwriting and spelling on the reader. If your handwriting is not very legible or you make spelling miscues, people form judgments about the quality of what you say on the basis of that. And those judgments are often very harsh in terms of thinking about whether the content and ideas in your writing are convincing.
Everybody’s had this experience when they write — their mind is a little bit faster than their hand, whether it’s typing or handwriting and something slips away before you even get it onto paper. Until handwriting, spelling, and typing are automatic and accurate, they can interfere with other writing processes as well. So it’s important that we help kids master these kind of fundamental skills right from the start.