Okuzeka
Child Development & Early Education vocabulary · Language and Communication

Mark making

Meaning in child development & early education, with examples

nounCommon term

In child development & early education, mark making means: The early marks children make with any tool, such as crayons, chalk, paint, sticks in sand or fingers in foam, which come before drawing and writing.

In Turkish: iz bırakma, karalama, yazıya hazırlık çalışmaları

How it is used

A UK early years term used in planning and observations. Children make marks, and staff treat them as meaningful ('she told me her marks say Mummy'). It is written with a hyphen before a noun: a mark-making area.

Example sentences

  1. We set up a mark making area with chalk, clipboards and big sheets of paper.

  2. His mark making now includes circles and lines, and he says they are letters.

Common collocations

  • mark-making area
  • make marks
  • early writing
  • emergent writing
  • emergent literacyThe early knowledge and skills that come before conventional reading and writing, such as enjoying books, knowing that print has meaning, recognising some letters and scribbling.
  • fine motor skillsSkills that use the small muscles of the hands and fingers, often together with the eyes, such as picking up small objects, using a spoon, holding a pencil or cutting with scissors.
  • hand-eye coordinationThe ability to use the eyes to guide the movements of the hands, for example when catching a ball, stacking blocks or pouring water.
  • phonological awarenessThe ability to hear and play with the sounds in spoken words, such as noticing rhymes, clapping syllables or hearing the first sound in a word.

More terms: Language and Communication

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: