Early mark making in practice…and play
“Adventures First...Explanations Take Such a Dreadful Time.”(The Grypon in Alice’s Adventures)
“Early mark making is not the same as writing. It is a sensory and physical experience for babies and toddlers, which they do not yet connect to forming symbols which can communicate meaning”
(EYFS Literacy:writing 0-26 months)
“Distinguishes between marks they make”
(Literacy 22 – 36 mnths)
“Enjoys the sensory experience of making marks in damp sand, paste or paint”
(Physical development: moving and handling, 8 – 20mnths)
“Beginning to use three fingers (tripod grip) to hold writing tools. Imitates drawing simple shapes such as circles and lines” (22 – 36 mnths)
Hopefully you can see from the above exerts from the Early Years curriculum that early writing is not about forming letters, copying over letters (tracing) or joining up dots. It is a sensory, organic process that starts right from when a baby first uses their hands to grasp something, from placing a block on top of another or stacking cups.
The definition of literacy in the early years extends beyond the mere “skills” of reading and writing (although I will be looking at how the environment can support and aid such development) as it serves more importantly as a narrative that is necessary for children to make sense of their world, to share and negotiate meaning.
It is about using their hands to discover what effect they can so when moving them in paint: the realisation that their fingers can be a powerful tool in themselves. This is why babies love to touch: poking noses, touching faces: they need a sensory feed back to realise what potential effect these amazing things on the ends of their arms can do.
This is the importance of messy play…as well as it being fun of course. Messy play is helping your child to write.
Moving on from messy play many children find the “tripod grip” difficult as it is fiddly, they need to often think about what they are doing, it can slow down their thought processes when all they want to do it get something on paper, to draw big swirls or circles. This is why we should not discourace the fist grip and allow for a lot of “big movement” first: using large paint brushes outside (or in!) with paint or water (for a cleaner experience); waving ribbons in a circle; using chunky chalks on the floor: all are good starting activities for growing babies and toddlers who want to make their mark.
There are then many activities that are easy to practice and can help develop fine motor control, which is important for pencil grip: Tearing paper using the finger and thumb of each hand, using scissors, cutting with a knife, putting small pegs into holes, using tools with play doh, hammering, construction such as meccano, threading, sewing, planting seed in the garden. All of these are exercising the children’s hands, ready to take up their pens and feel the thrill of writing.
When children begin to make marks on paper, they tend to take the shape of rounded circles. You will usually see something like this when they attempt to write their name:
The initial scribbles may be motivated just by again, the experience but as the child sees a relationship between these signs on the page and the effect they may have on the outside world (for example how they can tell a story to someone else by de coding their marks) then they are ready to make the scribbles more complex:
That is their emergent writing and from their your poet laureate of the future can grow (for more about emergent writing you can read the leaflet on ‘When a scribble is not a scribble)
My final footnote: never encourage your child to trace over letters. This is merely an exercise in tracing. To allow them to reproduce their names themselves is allowing them to think, to make conscious decisions about what their name looks like…about who they are.