Posts Tagged ‘Fine Motor Skills’
by Kim
Who doesn’t love an apple craft? We have a local apple festival here and the kids go nuts for anything apple at this time. This one is made from stuff around your house and apples.
First gather your supplies. You will need one apple, red paint, chenille stem, cereal loops, marker, piece of cardboard (we used a pizza box lid), and scissors.
Take your marker and draw an apple outline on your cardboard.
Cut your apple in half and squeeze out some red paint. I removed the seeds and the stem.
Let your child start stamping away. This was so much fun!
Once your child has filled in the apple by stamping, you can let it dry. Don’t worry about paint outside of the lines. They are little and you are going to cut out the apple any way.
While the apple is drying, instruct your child to thread the cereal loops onto the chenille stem. I let my daughter do it however, but this is a great time to introduce or practice patterns.
When they are done filling up the stem with cereal, thread one last one on the end. Bend the tip around and twist to secure the last loop. This will stop the others from coming off and makes a great “head”. Can you tell it is a worm yet?
I took a pencil and poked a hole into the cardboard, but you can use whatever you have around.
Push the open end of the stem into the hole. I wrapped the end around itself and the twisted the end into the loop to secure it.
Now you have an apple with a “real” worm coming out of it. My daughter really loved the craft. She has named her worm and insisted he get buckled into the van with the rest of us. She was refusing to pose for the shot. I am sure you have had those moments, too. 
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Kim is a contributing writer for No Time For Flash Cards, a mom to a toddler, a preschooler, and a foster parent, too. She juggles her day by trying out fun activities and crafts with the kids. After all, she is just a big kid herself. See what she has been up to over at Mom Tried It.
I get emails often asking for ideas based on materials so today I compiled some of our crafts that use clothespins. Our favorite is the Clothespin Dinosaur Craft above but over the years we have used clothespins for a whole bunch of learning.
This week I dove into Pinterest full on. I love the ideas that are out there and for creative bloggers it’s this fine balance between getting inspired and feeling like everyone else has all the best ideas. After brushing myself off, telling myself not to act like my children I dove back in and fell in love. All of this is to explain that I got this idea from a pin – after seeing these great labyrinths from bloesem kids I thought how can I make it so it encourages writing but is low on the frustration meter. This is what we did.
- Gather your materials. You will need a CD case, some plain paper, markers, scissors and dry erase markers.
- Start by taking the liner out of the cd case and tracing it to make your own liners – we made 4 by folding and layering the paper before cutting.
- Next make the mazes. Ok so you could totally print some off the internet too and I encourage you to do this because man making mazes isn’t super easy, but maybe I am just maze challenged.
- Pop them all in a stack and into your case facing the back . Now your child can do a few at a time or all in one sitting.
- Add your kid and dry erase – mistakes are no biggie and look , writing practice!
If you make a mistake , just wipe and try again! 
You really should check out bloesem kids they have some magnificent ideas.
This activity doesn’t just have to be for superheroes, any theme could be turned into a “school” from fairies, to dog trainers, firefighter to princesses! This model is a fun way to work on basic skills that kids tend to get sloppy on during the summer when days are filled with more exuberant play. Spending a quiet time here or there still playing but working on skills at the same time helps kids stay on track while having fun.
- Before you gather your materials decide what skills you want to work on. Math, Letter recognition, Sight Words, Fine Motor, Patterning... you choose. Try to make sure that you don’t overwhelm your child, 2-3 options is probably enough.Remember to you aren’t testing your child you are using pretend play and activities to learn and have fun.
- Gather the materials needed for the “school ” of your choice. I wanted to work on my son’s fine motor, writing and counting.
- Our first lesson was “Bomb Squad” .
His goal was to pick out the yellow, green and blue bombs ( aka pompoms) from the container to keep the city safe! What this teaches is color recognition, counting and using the pinchers is great for fine motor.
- Next up we had “Power Station” a super simple math activity that he places the correct number of stickers in the columns. Also I again worked in fine motor with the action of peeling the sticker off. I’m so tricky yo.
- Lastly I decorated a workbook to look like a batman journal to encourage some superhero reports. My son is not the most excited writer so anything that will encourage it without pushing is something I look for. This did the trick .
- Do not be empty handed after the tasks are completed – I made him a super fast medal like the family medals we made a while back to congratulate him on completing his super hero training!
Super Hero Board Book
My First Batman Book: Touch and Feel
I am just reviewing one book today because I want to really focus on it. It’s a rare find. A board book , a touch and feel no less, about Batman. Trust me it’s rare, I squealed when I found it at the library and could not believe what a treat it was to read with both my kids. It’s not secret my son ( the one in the improvised Batman mask above) is into super heroes, he is also into books and I want to encourage that. However some of the books are so violent and I don’t want to expose him to all that at 4.5 , it’s just too young for my comfort zone. For beginning readers there are some great I Can Read books but for even younger ones pickings are super slim. Luckily there is this book. It’s sturdy, it’s age appropriate and it even glows in the dark!
My daughter is learning her shapes and colors. She is doing fabulous, but I remember my son having trouble with certain shapes simply because we didn’t talk about them as much. Let’s face it diamonds, ovals, and octagons (other than stop signs) don’t really come up that often. So I came up with this sensory box as a fun way to practice these shapes.
You will need scissors, craft foam, cardboard, aluminum foil, and black beans.
I drew some shapes onto the craft foam and cardboard. Rectangles on green (for emeralds), octagons on red (for rubies), ovals on blue (for sapphires), and diamonds on the cardboard.
Cut the shapes out and wrap the diamond shapes with small pieces of foil.
Pour the black beans and shapes in the bowl. I chose black beans because I thought it would look more like coal. It really makes the colors stand out, too.
To make it a tad more authentic for mining, you can cut strips of construction paper and tape them together to fit around your child’s head. Then cut a 1 inch section off of a toilet paper roll and tape it to the headband. I thought we had yellow tissue paper (very cute for the headlamp, but we didn’t). He’s still cute, I think.
You can give your child tongs, sifter, strainer, colander, or measuring cups. Try anything to make it feel more like mining. It’s all about having fun.
Every time my daughter found a shape I would say “Wow, you found a blue oval. Great job!” or the corresponding shape and color. We had a blast mining. My son had to play along after he saw how much fun my daughter was having.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Kim is a contributing writer for No Time For Flash Cards, a mom to a toddler, a preschooler, and a foster parent, too. She juggles her day by trying out fun activities and crafts with the kids. After all, she is just a big kid herself. See what she has been up to over at Mom Tried It.
