Halloween Themed Mark Making Prompt Cards – Pre-Writing Resource

These Halloween mark making prompt cards show the same ten marks as our Halloween mark making mat but each is given its own card, which means you can shuffle them up and deal them out, hide them, hold one up for every one to use or choose which one you want to use.

You could stand them in your writing center, add them to a display, use them in a morning tub or spread all ten across your writing table and let your little learners choose.

What Exactly Is Mark Making?

Mark making is an umbrella term for every scribble, dot, line and loop a child makes before they start forming actual letters.

The National Association for the Education of Young Children points out that children as young as two begin imitating writing through drawings and symbolic markings, and that these early skills are strong predictors of later reading and writing ability.

What Skills Can Your Little Ones Learn And Develop?

These Halloween themed mark making cards is designed to help your children practice and develop their prewriting skills, such as:

• Pre-writing control – Many of the marks on the cards appear inside letters and numbers. Practicing them means the movement is already familiar by the time formal letter formation begins.
• Fine motor skills and pencil control – Making a loop or a steady ladder takes hand and finger strength.
• Hand-eye coordination – Children have to look at a model and get their hand to reproduce it.
• Visual discrimination – Telling a wave apart from a zig zag, or a swirl from a loop, builds the same noticing skills that later help distinguish b from d.
• Positional and descriptive language – Words like over, under, across, around and through get used while children work.
• Confidence and independence – as they make the marks themselves without any adult help.

These are all vital fine motor skills that will enable them to become great writers in the future!

RELATED Playdough can also be a great way to improve hand strength – you can check out an easy no cook recipe here!

How To Prepare The Halloween Mark Making Prompts

First you’re going to want to download mark making card set by clicking on download button at the bottom of the page.

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Then print it off and put it somewhere your little ones can see.

Get Even More Out of These Halloween Themed Mark Making Cards

Here are some ways you could use them:

Mark Making Memory Game

Print two sets, lay all twenty face down and play a straightforward matching game. Every time a child turns over a card they name the mark out loud, which sneaks in the vocabulary without anyone noticing. When they find a pair, they get to draw that mark on a small whiteboard or piece of paper before their next turn.

Hide Them Around the Room

Tuck the cards under chairs, behind the door and inside the book corner, then send your little learners off to hunt. Every card they find gets copied onto their paper before they go looking for the next one. A nice little wayt to turn this pencil control activity into something that feels like a game.

Pull One From the Cauldron

Drop all the cards face down into a plastic cauldron, a witch’s hat or an old box (decorated spoolily) and let children reach in without looking. Whatever they pull out is the mark they make. 

Peek and Draw

Hold up a card for three seconds, then hide it and ask everyone to draw what they saw. Build up to showing two cards at once for anyone who finds it easy.

Roll It Out in Playdough

Set the cards along the back of a tray and let children roll long snakes to form each mark. Squishing, rolling and pinching builds the hand strength that makes holding a pencil easier later on. Our easy no cook playdough recipe will help keep you stocked.

Describe and Draw 

One child takes a card and keeps it hidden, then describes the mark while a partner tries to draw it. No pointing and no showing. It means they’ll need to use some precise language. When they’re done, swap over and go again.

Build a Spooky Writing Center Around Them

Prop a few cards up on a table with some orange and purple pens, blank paper and a couple of dry-erase boards etc. you could also include something more structured like our line tracing worksheets when they’re ready.

Move From Marks to Names

Once the strokes are comfortable, the a nice next step could be your child’s own name. Our name tracing worksheet generator will build a personalized sheet in seconds, and you can paste in a whole class list at once. 

However you use these Halloween mark making cards, I hope they help!

Enjoy and let’s nurture those neurons!