Development in Mark Making

This week we are talking about our families and who lives in our houses. The children all did black pen drawings of their families. We made sure to talk about facial features and other body parts that we could include in the drawings. Some children even included pets!
I've posted some of the children's drawings here to show different stages in the development and progress of mark-marking.

Although this drawing shows the added development of actual writing, the drawing itself depicts very basic features. Children often focus on the face and leave out the rest of the body when they are in the early stages of drawing people. I call this the "floating heads" stage.

This one cracks me up!

This is quite a common stage in drawing people as well - the legs growing straight out of the head.

"The preschematic stage stage of drawing is the first conscious creation of form which provides a tangible record of the child's thinking process. The first representational attempt is a person, usually with circle for head and two vertical lines for legs. Later other forms develop, clearly recognizable and often quite complex. Children continually search for new concepts so symbols constantly change." -learning design

This week, we are taking photos of the children with the person who drops them off to continue our families display. We've also asked parents to bring in photos of their families to help with "family vocabulary" like "brother," "sister," "uncle," and "grandmother."

As a result of some of the drawings that lack body parts, we are going to be tracing our bodies to create a display. We will label basic body parts, take photos of our hands, legs, feet, elbows, etc. and discuss where we can put them on the body tracing. We will also use mirrors again to help us become more familiar with what our bodies look like. I can't wait to see their drawings after all this focus!