Theme 4: How mark-making helps children learn

Supporting parents and carers to encourage their child to make marks.

Talk about the benefits

Children love exploring making marks from a very young age – you can see this whenever they play with their food. There is a strong link between mark-making and learning to write.

• It helps them develop the physical skills to support hand-eye coordination and holding pencils and crayons
• It helps them understand how marks can convey meaning, i.e. writing, painting or drawing maps

Make marks together

Show parents how they might support their children with mark-making. The ORIM framework is particularly useful to keep in mind for this activity.

Download a quick guide to the ORIM framework

Follow-up activities

More activities you can do in the session or suggest families try in their own time.

• Show parents more resources they can use around the house to encourage their child’s mark-making
• Print colouring sheets for families to use after your session
• Encourage them to bring along something their child has made marks on next time you see them