“Education begins the moment we see children as innately wise and capable beings. Only then can we play along in their world!”
It is built within every child to express, explore and experiment!
“Before a child talks, they sing. Before they write they draw….” (Phylicia Rashard)
Young children innately learn through play; they learn because they enjoy investigating through sensory and physical experiences.
Mark making refers to the lines, squiggles, shapes, patterns, textures and scribbles young children present us. Children begin to be writers by giving meaning to their marks; drawings that they talk about; pictures that they explain and tell a story through. As they become more emergent writers this progresses to making parks for a purpose; explaining their shopping list, register or map.
It’s important that we remember that mark marking is not as restrictive as simply created with crayons, chalk, pens or pencils. Mark making can be any media that makes marks and for many young children this starts with making marks in the outdoors. Children can use sticks in mud, water on the floor, paint, brushes, sticks to make marks and create symbols and pictures, list goes on…. Mark making is anything that the child uses as a medium to express and communicate meaning.
Exposure to early mark making experiences ensure young children have the opportunity to develop coordination, an interest and pleasure that they can be independent thinkers, creating their own marks through creative representations.
Before children can develop fine motor skills they must develop gross motor skills – they need experiences which involve large actions – igging, sweeping, climbing are just a few examples. Once children have good gross motor skills, they will then be able to develop the fine motor skills.
This image shows the difference in the development of a hand of a 5 year old and 7 year old – the difference in 2 two years to their development means that by 7 their muscles are more developed and stronger.
Early activities give endless opportunities for learning outdoors. Such as prodding fingers into mud, sand running through fingers, paint smearing, exploring chalk, soft dough or flour, supports children in the early stages of making sense of the world around them and opens the journey towards writing.
As children develop their mark making becomes more writing based, over the course of the Early Years a child’s mark making progresses further than any other stage of learning. A child hand muscles develop over time and even in Reception are not fully formed.
Watching a child’s happiness and delight when they explore and experiment - creating shapes in the sand, mud or flour is vital. A child will gain the support and understanding that you value their marks and communication; it’s essential that parents and carers as well as educationalists put time into this and value children’s play as an important step in their writing journey. It is important at these key moments you ask the child engaging questions about their ‘masterpiece’. If you have the opportunity to take these experiences outside to the woods or natural outdoor areas, even better.
I am very lucky to live near the coast and I have fond memories of taking my own child, at the age of two, down to the beach on a cold autumnal day and spending most of the day using a stick and our fingers to create shapes and marks in the damp sand!
It is important to remember that all the stages of writing are not neat and event. A child who can write simple sentence with adult guidance in Reception may still ‘write’ using zigzags, squiggles and lines in their play. Learning to write takes time and is a long, gradual process that include gaining knowledge.
Puranik and Lonigan (2014) talk about three broad areas – conceptual, procedural and generative knowledge. When looking at writing developing through these three areas we can see that most children do not become fluent writers until around the age of eleven.
So what is the point of providing young child with all of these fun, messy engaging activities???
Research over many years has shown that mark making is crucial for young children’s development and learning. It supports the young muscles in the hand to hold a pen correctly, improving on fine motor/ hand and eye control and co-ordination, preparing them for future writing. It allows them to show representations of their thoughts and ideas, enabling children to express
themselves and tell stories through drawings/ marks. It will also support critical thinking and will build towards more complex thinking tasks for the future.
It is essential that children have enjoyment, a sense of reward and pleasure in the physical activity of mark making before it becomes part of school-based learning. Over time and increasing exposure to the experiences, children’s skills and dexterity will improve and they will start to realise that they are gaining more control and their creativity and confidence will start to thrive. Early writing experiences can help to shape future writers by giving them enjoyment, creativity and confidence. It’s important not to confuse writing with handwriting – handwriting is about the formation of recognisable letters – writing can be scribed by someone else; writing can be formed with different media – it’s is about linking spoken words and language to text. At the end of the day everything floats on a sea of talk and to be a confident, creative writer in life children need time to explore, mark making and talk.
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