Inspired by "Mark Making Matters"

The 3-year-olds have been passionately drawing with crayons at the collage table and at the easel with paint. True, they are too young to draw something easily recognisable, however, the marks they made are not random. The young children are experimenting with expressing themselves with marks.

‘Scribbles are products of a systematic investigation, rather than haphazard actions’.John Matthews (1999), The Art of Childhood and Adolescence: The Construction of Meaning 

I know my responsibility to celebrate and support mark making, so I research on the topic in order to enrich for my planning. I discovered Mark Making Matters from the UK.


First step is to inform the parents, my partners in supporting children in their learning. I displayed some works of children on the wall, with explanation about the values of mark making:

Through their marks, they are communicating their ideas, expressing their feelings, developing their imagination and creativity, and testing their hypotheses about the world. These opportunities for making ‘thinking visible’ are fundamental to children’s learning and development and should be the entitlement of every child.

Sometimes marks are made for the pure physical enjoyment of the activity – the feel of the crayon and felt-tip pen as they glide over the surface of paper, or the sight of the brightly-coloured dribbles of paint as they spread over… On these occasions, the physical activity is an end in itself and an opportunity for young children to experiment and explore with their senses, developing confidence, physical coordination and dexterity through the process.

I copied off from Mark Making Matters. I have to because as a 3-year-old teacher in Australia, I simply have no office time to do documentation. A little complain here. You will know if you teach in Australia. If you are from other parts of the world, I will talk about that in later posts.