Marvellous Mark-making

Every week, the children in FS1, participate in mark-making sessions. This is the process children undergo before they start forming any letters. Mark-making is crucial for a child’s development and learning. It not only teaches young children how to hold a pen correctly, but it also prepares them for writing and develops their handwriting skills.

Through mark-making, the FS1 children engage in sensory play, allowing them to discover and explore new exciting materials other than pen and paper. They find different ways of making marks that may be done on a piece of paper, on the floor, outside the classroom or on an object or surface. They are also encouraged to create marks using their fingers to draw in the sand, using paint, with chalks or flour.

The children in FS1 get plenty of opportunities to explore various ways of writing which could be a simple dot or a line across a paper, all of which contributes to mark-making. This gives children the opportunity and supports them to represent their ideas, bringing out their creativity and allows them to communicate their feelings through their drawings or even use their marks to tell a story!

To strengthen their muscles, The FS1 children usually engage in different fine motor activities every week for example ‘dough discos’ where they squash and squeeze play dough.

It is always amazing to see the FS1 children beginning to use the mark-making work they have done individually or in groups and watching as different types of marks appear in their own drawing and pre-writing activities.