Mark Making: How to Help Your Child Develop Early Writing Behaviours
Mark making is a key part of the learn to write process for preschoolers. It’s important to give them lots of opportunities to learn different tools and explore writing in their own way, by using mark making techniques.
What is Mark Making?
Mark making is very simply, making lines, dots, shapes and other marks on a page. Scribbling gets a bad rap, but it’s one of the important ways that young children explore and experiment with writing. They practice holding a writing tool and making different lines and shapes.
In fact, they don’t even need a writing tool at all! Using their fingers and hands to draw in shaving cream, sand, or dry rice are great ways to develop their early writing behaviours.
What is your child learning while making marks?
- Hand-eye coordination
- Language development
- Brain development
- Fine motor strength in fingers and hands
- Representation of objects (making a yellow circle to represent the sun)
- Left to right directionality
You can help your child develop writing behaviours by providing lots of opportunities for mark making.
Here are 10 ways that parents can help their child learn how to write through mark making.
01. Provide a paper and writing utensil for your child to use at any time of day, both inside and outside the house.
02. Give them opportunities to explore mark making tools by providing different types of pens or pencils with varying degrees of color saturation or resistance.
03. Encourage scribbling on a variety of surfaces – on a tray of shaving foam, in water with a paintbrush, or with crayons on paper. This will allow your child to learn how the marks they make in one surface change when you use a different writing tool.
04. Encourage them to explore mark making techniques by asking open ended questions like “What do you think could happen if we added more lines?” or “How would moving this shape around change it?”. This will extend their thinking about the activity.
05. Set up a space where they can learn more about mark making through repeated practice – for example, by creating their own wall poster of scribbles or shapes.
06. Encourage your child to talk as they make marks on the page – “What do you think will happen if we draw this line?” or “I’m going to make a loooong line. Are you going to make a line that is longer or shorter?”
07. If your child wants to learn how to write their ABCs, help them learn by doing mark making exercises – for example, tracing a letter with one continuous line or drawing shapes of the letters they know so far.
08. Let your child draw on an easel or on a large piece of paper against a wall. This angle is good for developing the wrist and hand position for writing.
09. Have your child make marks in the bathtub using washable paints or bath crayons.
010. Encourage children to learn how to hold and control their writing tools by providing many opportunities for mark making exercises. Use a pencil grip to help them develop a tripod grasp.
