Our Story

Sunny Markers are designed and developed by a Kiwi Occupational Therapist living in Melbourne. Through our experience and passion with working with children, we have found fine motor skills to be the foundation for independence and have such a big impact on children's emergent literacy, communication, connection and learning. It is therefore our vision at Sunny Markers for all children to be able to express themselves and connect to their world as confident and involved learners.

  • Our Story

Hi! My name is Claudia, a paediatric occupational therapist from New Zealand, living and working in Melbourne, Australia. My partner Alec is from Chicago, and together we have designed and developed Sunny Markers.

Working as a paediatric occupational therapist in the community - including in homes, schools and kindergartens around Melbourne, I was having a lot of conversations with parents and educators surrounding fine motor skills.

Many parents and educators were highlighting similar concerns around their children having delayed fine motor skills, and more specifically, not moving through the grasp stages or developing a mature pen/pencil grasp. I was consistently looking for short, thick markers or pencils to recommend and use, to best support children to develop their fine motor skills.

  • Short and thick writing tools are recommended by occupational therapists as they build intrinsic muscles in the hands and fingers for increased strength and endurance when colouring, drawing and writing, as well as open the web space between the finger and thumb to develop a mature grasp and dexterity.

    However, I was constantly finding the only options on the market were crayons. Although crayons are great, children with hand and finger weakness were not getting the desired results, due to their light touch on paper.

  • Crayons are more work and effort, whereas markers require much less pressure and energy!

    After scouring the market looking for similarly designed markers and not finding any, we decided to come up with a solution ourselves. It is in this way, Sunny Markers came to be.

  • Through our experience and passion with working with children, we have found fine motor skills to be the foundation for independence and have such a big impact on children's emergent literacy, communication, connection and learning.

    It is therefore our vision at Sunny Markers for all children to be able to express themselves and connect to their world as confident and involved learners.