17/01/2026
Did you know… this is how you get your 2–5 year old boy to want to pick up a pen! 🖊️
Research shows that boys often spend less time mark making at home than girls. This can impact confidence and willingness to write when it becomes expected at school. I am determined for my son to start school with the same amount of mark making practice as my daughter (who was always keen to colour in or doodle)… so I’ve had to come up with some games that hook him in! ☺️
Here’s the game that my little boy LOVES to play:
🖊 Grab a large piece of paper
🕷️Place characters your child is interested in around the page
📖 Make up a simple storyline that needs lines, marks and shapes
My little boy is Spidey obsessed, so his marks become Spider-Man’s webs. First he shoots webs to catch the baddies, then when one tries to escape he draws a trap around them (hello sneaky circle practice 👀).
What looks like doodling is actually building really important pre-writing foundations. I place the characters carefully so he’s naturally drawing:
• horizontal lines
• vertical lines
• circles
• crosses
• and eventually diagonals
I’ll be sharing another post soon all about these pre-writing shapes and why they matter — but for now, give this a try and let me know in the comments how it goes 🤍
