ABSTRACT
Typical children use other kinds of representations to 'read' or record representations of quantities. The processes they use include understanding the pictures or icons they see and making their own marks and pictures. These are simple beginnings and are close to concrete activity, but nonetheless are important forms of representational thinking. Typical infants enjoy the processes of mark making, and the sensory feedback that it gives them motivates practice, which develops motor skills. As sensory mark making refines children's control of linear and circular actions and develops other patterns, actions emerge such as 'dabbing' and 'enclosing'. When children are able to draw enclosures, control dabbing and make marks inside boundaries, their mark making may take on pictorial elements to which they may assign meaning and show awareness of representing quantities.
