Mark making

This week I seem to have been very busy finding ideas for my class at school. I want to get a little more mark making in the classroom, but I refuse to have sit and write sessions. I should point out here I am an Early years teacher and I am happy to encourage mark making but refuse to enforce it. I went on a training course last week and the lady running it was telling us that she has dangled chalks from trees using string so that when the children run around the tree holding the chalk make marks. I am not fortunate enough to have a tree in our outside area so have been thinking about how I could replicate this with the resources I do have. For me the idea seems to be that the children running around the tree enjoyed the mark making as they were able to do it whilst moving in a very active way.

With this in mind I taped chalks to long bamboo canes so that the children in my class could run holding the chalk and draw on the playground as they went. This was received with great enthusiasm, from here I changed the activity by filling large shallow trays with paint and offering the children brooms. Yep you got it, I have one colourful playground now. The children loved it. I have managed to get reluctant mark makers trying out different ways of moving to make straight lines/ bumpy lines/ mountain lines etc as well as some more children attempting to write their names. I want to continue this line of thinking so am now trying to think of ways for the children to mark make on a large scale. Am thinking on Monday we will be welly print painting the playground. I would love to hear from others on ways they have encouraged children (theirs, or some they are lucky enough to borrow) to mark make on a large scale.

At home this is going down well with Stephanie at the minute;

These lovely messages/ pictures were made using bath crayons from the pound shop. I had these for Dylan when he was younger, he used to love leaving me messages it really helped his spelling and reading as we left replies to each other in the bath tiles. So when I was shopping today and I saw them I could not resist them for Stephanie.