Writing begins with Mark-making By Ms. Richa Sinha

Don't stress out if your child isn't interested in writing. Your child may seem to engage in all of the activities, conversation, and expression related to alphabets, numbers, and stories but might not appear to be interested in writing. 

Writing is a skill that greatly depends on muscular development; it takes a lot of control to draw letters, numbers, or a few different shapes with a pencil. Making marks is something that should be emphasized.  The various lines, dots, marks, patterns, and textures we use to make an artwork or to express thoughts are referred to as "mark-making." Most of the time it’s spontaneous, messy, and free. It could be done on surfaces like paper, canvas, or textiles. The following

could be used to make marks like pencils, pens, brushes, chalk, or charcoal or found objects such as twigs and feathers, leaves, caps of bottles, and so on. This helps children to master the essential abilities before they can write. These abilities help the child’s grip and use a pencil as well as be able to draw, write, and color stand out

Points to be considered while introducing Mark Making:

1. Let the children hold the mark-making instrument by themselves. The pencil grip will develop naturally as their gross and fine motor skills develop. The child’s grasp develops in stages. Each stage builds specific muscles and strength in the fingers, hands, and arms.

2. Mark-making is a process. The focus should be on what the child is thinking about with their markings rather than the outcome.

3. It is important that children discover for themselves how to use mark-making tools. This is where the real growth happens.

4. Just like learning to walk, learning to write progresses in stages, so have patience as you go.

Forcing young children to write before their hands and fingers are ready for it is damaging to both their long-term understanding and the joy of writing as a form of self-expression. So let's emphasize mark-making; writing will follow.