Long before letters appear, children are already leaving traces of their thinking. Sweeping lines, dense scribbles, looping marks that spill across the page. These marks are often dismissed as “just scribbles”, tolerated until something more recognisable emerges. But for the child making them, something important is already happening.
Watch a young child making marks – really watch them – and you might begin to notice something adults often miss. The concentration. The rhythm. The way their whole body is involved. The quiet satisfaction when a mark appears exactly where they intended it to.
This isn’t idle scribbling. It’s purposeful, physical thinking, and it’s one of the most important foundations for writing later on.
There’s a temptation to judge early marks by what they resemble, or by how close they are to something recognisable. But when we look at mark-making through the Early Years Lens we need to shift our focus. Instead of asking what a mark is, we can begin to consider what it’s doing – and what it’s helping a child to discover.
What is mark-making?
Mark-making is the act of making marks on a surface – and it comes in many forms! These marks might be temporary – a finger dragged through sand, water painted onto a wall – or they might stick around for a while – a line drawn across a piece of paper.
Mark-making is often described as “the stage before writing”, but that framing misses what children are actually doing when they make marks. Of course, the two areas are intertwined, and mark-making underpins early writing. But for babies and very young children, mark-making serves a much broader purpose.
In these earliest stages, children aren’t creating marks to communicate symbolic meaning in the way writing eventually does. Instead, they are experiencing their senses, testing what their bodies can do, and exploring how their actions create change in the world around them. Long before letters appear, mark-making is supporting a wide range of developmental foundations.
Through mark-making, children are building:
Physical control and coordination
- Gross and fine motor strength
- Hand-eye coordination
- Control over tools and pressure
Cognitive engagement
- Focus and sustained attention
- Investigation and problem-solving
- Understanding of cause and effect
Expression and meaning
- Imagination and creativity
- Early storytelling
- Ways to convey thoughts and feelings before written language is available
None of this happens in isolation. That’s what makes the early years so beautiful! These foundations develop together, through repeated, meaningful experiences that feel purposeful to the child.
What mark-making needs in order to flourish
Contrary to what social media would have you believe, mark-making doesn’t need elaborate set-ups, themed activities, or constant adult direction. In fact, it’s often at its richest when it’s allowed to unfold naturally. What really matters are the conditions around it.
Time makes a big difference. Children need chances to return to mark-making again and again, without a sense that they should have “moved on” by now. Repetition isn’t a sign they’re stuck – it’s how control, confidence and understanding gradually build.
Space matters too. Space to move their bodies, to use their arms and shoulders, to make marks that don’t have to stay inside lines or look tidy. Mark-making is a whole-body experience, especially in the early years, and it needs room to breathe.
Materials matter, but variety matters just as much. Different tools, surfaces and textures invite different kinds of movement and experimentation. A chunky crayon, a stick in the mud, a brush dipped in water – each one offers something slightly different to explore.
And then there’s the adult response, which might be the most important part of all. When marks are judged too quickly, steered too firmly towards recognisable outcomes, or treated as something to correct, children can become cautious. When marks are noticed, wondered about, and valued for what they are, children are far more likely to engage with confidence and curiosity.
How mark-making connects to early writing
If mark-making isn’t simply an early form of writing, it’s reasonable to ask how the two are connected.
The connection isn’t about letters or accuracy. It’s about foundations.
Through mark-making, children are gradually building the physical, cognitive and emotional capacities that writing later depends on. They’re learning how it feels to move a tool with intention, how to sustain effort, how to control movement, and how to tolerate trial and error. They’re also learning something quieter but just as important: that their actions can leave a trace, and that ideas can be made visible.
Writing asks children to bring many demands together at once. It requires strength and coordination in the hands and arms, visual control, posture, and sustained attention. It also asks children to hold ideas in mind, organise them, and commit them to a page – often in a fixed, irreversible way.
Mark-making allows children to explore all of this without the pressure of getting it right.
Because marks are open-ended, children can focus on the experience rather than the outcome. They can experiment, repeat movements, abandon an idea and return to it later. Confidence builds gradually, alongside control. By the time writing begins to take shape, many of the underlying demands have already been rehearsed – just not in a way that looks decipherable to an adult.
This is why mark-making belongs firmly in the Before the Pencil conversation. It doesn’t rush children towards written outcomes. Instead, it creates the conditions that make writing feel possible, meaningful and manageable when the time comes.
Seeing mark-making through an Early Years lens
Mark-making is easy to overlook because it doesn’t always look impressive. It can be messy, fleeting, and hard to interpret. There’s often nothing neat to show for it, nothing easily measurable or recognisable. But when we slow down enough to notice it, mark-making tells us a great deal about how children think, move, and make sense of the world.
Through these early marks, children are building control, confidence and understanding – long before writing takes shape in ways adults can read. They are learning what their bodies can do, how their actions create change, and how ideas can begin to exist outside of their own minds.
Seen through an early years lens, mark-making isn’t something to rush through on the way to writing. It’s a vital foundation that deserves time, space and respect. When we honour it for what it is, we don’t delay writing. We strengthen the foundations that make writing feel possible, meaningful and manageable when the time comes.
This post is part of the “Before the Pencil” series, exploring the foundations children need before writing begins.