fine motor skills Archives - Page 2 of 2

Cool Games- Button Golf

June 23, 2014 By Deirdre

As far as cool games go, JDaniel thinks this is one of the coolest. After playing the basic version on the game for awhile and some versions of his own, he announced that we need to keep this game for a long time. I just love it when I find a learning activity that he really likes.

Button golf and the cool games JDaniel came up with to make it his own really work on fine motor skills, eye hand coordination, estimating force and well so much more. I love games that have kids learning while playing.

Let me walk you through how to create a button golf game and then the various cool games JDaniel and I came up with.

Creating a Button Golf Game

You will need the following supplies to put your game together:

Paper towel roll
Toothpicks (nine)
White construction paper
Markers (various colors)
Scissors (pointed end scissors)
Tape
Buttons (Some with raised edges and some smooth edged)

Directions for Creating the Game

Place marks at one and a half inch intervals on the paper towel tube. I did this around the whole paper towel tube.

Cut from one mark in each section to the next going around the tube until you cut out that section of the tube. When it has been cut out, it should look like a napkin ring.

After you have all your paper towel rings cut out, cut out nine small triangular flags or pennants from the white construction paper.

Number the flags from one to nine with marker. We used a different colored marker for each number.

Place two small horizontal slits on the large end of the triangle.

Weave a toothpick through the two slit in each flag.

Tape the bottom of a flag to the back of each of the paper towel rings.

These rings will be your golf holes!

Cool Games to Play

Basic Button Golf

Place the golf rings out on a table or the floor in any configuration your like. Make sure you have enough space between rings to flip the buttons.

Starting with the golf hole number one trying flipping a button into the ring by placing a top button on the edge of a bottom button and pressing down. The pressure from the top button will make the bottom button fly.

Once you have flipped a button into the first golf hole, move onto the next hole.

Button Golf Line Up

Put all of the golf ring holes in a line and try to move quickly from one hole to the next. This version of the game doesn’t require moving around a table or on the ground to get to the next hole.

You can make this game challenging by taking out and ruler and measuring out a distance you will need to flip the button from.

Sum! Button Golf

You can spread the golf rings out as you did in the basic version. One player can call out an addition fact and another player can try to flip their button into the golf button ring with the sum.

For more learning games you will want to check out my Early Learning Pinterest board. It is filled with them.

Follow JDaniel4’s Mom’s board Early Learning on Pinterest.

Other Cool Games

Lego Count and Move

Gold Coin Vowel Sound Drop

15 Outdoor Activities for Kids

Fine Motor Activity- Fold and Thread Necklace

June 16, 2014 By Deirdre

Children of various ages benefit from working on fine motor skills. This fine motor activity actually creates the opportunity for children to work a several fine motor skills. I have called this fine motor activity Fold and Thread Necklace, but there are really several other skills that children will work on while creating the necklace. I will tell you more about them as we go along.

Supplies Need For the Fine Motor Activity

Construction paper (red, blue and white)
Scissors
Hole punch
Ruler
Pencil
Yarn (red)

Directions for the Fold and Thread Necklace

I went ahead and drew vertical lines one inch apart on front of pieces of red, blue and while construction paper. On the back on the construction paper I drew horizontal lines three inches apart.

JDaniel cut the vertical strips out first. It was hard to cut the strips perfectly straight. Some strips ended up a little wavy. They looked really cool with a little bit of wave. If you really want super straight strips, you may want to fold the paper in half horizontally. Children will have much shorter strip to cut out. Don’t worry about creating a crease in the paper. Children will cut along the crease when they make the horizontal cuts.

When the long strips had been cut out, JDaniel turned them over and cut the strips along the horizontal line I had draw on the paper. He declared this much easier to do.

The next step was a little bit hard to do. Each strip need to be fan folded. That means folding a portion of the strip down turning the paper over and folding another portion of the strip down. This process continues until you reach the end of the strip. That is about four folds.

When you have strip fan folded, you will use a hole punch to create a hole in the center of the fan folded paper. This can be a little challenging too. We found that if you used thin construction paper for this fine motor activity it was easier to punch holes through.

Keeping the strip fan folded thread a piece of yarn through its holes. Once the strip is on the yarn, you can open the fan fold a little or a lot. It is so much easier to thread the yard through as a collapsed strip then it would have been to thread the yarn through each hole.

You will need to repeat the fan folding, hole punching, and threading steps until you have a number of strips on the yarn. We chose fold and hole punch all the strips before threading, but how you complete these three steps is really up to you.

While creating this fine motor necklace, kids have worked on cutting, folding, hole punching, and threading. Combining of all these skills gives kids the opportunity to create a really fun necklace.

Feel free to try a variety of different types of paper, foam or material to create a fold and thread necklace. The key is the thickness of the material you decided to use. The thinner the material is the easier it will be to hole punch. Warning: If the material is too thin, it could tear while children are trying to cut or thread it.

Here is another fine motor activity we have tried. Weaving ribbons through a dish drying mat help children work on planning, creating, and threading. We had a lot of fun fine motor weaving.

Watch for more fine motor activities this week and a huge giveaway here on Friday. When I say huge I mean huge, you won’t want to miss it.

Preschool Activities – LEGO Duplo Creations and Books

May 26, 2014 By Deirdre

My favorite preschool activities usually involve reading a book or singing a song and then exploring the book through an activity. Recently we used LEGO Duplo blocks to explore animals in the song Over in the Meadow. We later read several versions of the song in story form. What fun we had!

Here are our creations along with the song:

Over in the Meadow

In a pond in the sun,

Lived an old mother duck

And her little duck one,

“Quack!” said the mother,

“Quack!” said the one,

And they quacked and were happy

In the pond in the sun.

Over in the meadow

In a stream so blue,

Lived an old mother fish

And her little fish two,

“Bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop!” said the mother,

“Bloop, bloop!” said the two,

And they swam and were happy

In the stream so blue.

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Over in the meadow

In a nest in the tree,

Lived an old mother bird

And her birdies three,

“Tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet!” said the mother,

“Tweet, tweet, tweet!” said the three,

And they sang and were happy

In the nest in the tree.

Over in the meadow

On a rock by the shore,

Lived an old mother frog,

And her little frogs four,

“Ribbit!” said the mother,

“Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit, ribbit! said the four,

On a rock by the shore.

Over in the meadow

In a big bee hive,

Lived an old mother bee

and her little bees five,

“Buzz!” said the mother,

“Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz!” said the five,

And they buzzed and were happy

In the big bee hive.

Activities We Did

We went over the song Over in the Meadow by singing it.
Then we made LEGO Duplo Creations to represent the animals in the song.
Next we pointed to each animal as they came up in the song as we sang it.
We took picture walked (looked through the book’s pictures) and then read the books.
Finally we talked about how each book version was different and how they were the same.

You may find that you really like some of the activities above and there others you don’t want to do. The reason I gave you a list was so that you could choose the preschool activities that you really liked.