fine motor Archives - Page 3 of 3

Valentine Ideas- LEGO Heart Puzzle

February 10, 2015 By Deirdre

I thought a creating a heart with a message for my son out of LEGOS would be one of those Valentine ideas that he would think was fun. One afternoon last week I dumped all of his LEGOS out of the LEGO Bucket container I made for JDaniel and searched for the red LEGOS of all different shapes and sizes. I also searched for long white LEGO to build my message. A LEGO classic green baseplate was used as the creation space.

When I was finished, I showed him the LEGO creation. He really loved it and wanted to know how I had put it together. That got me thinking. I could take off some of the LEGO and create a puzzle for my son. He could spread out the pieces that I had taken out and try to figure out just where they needed to go to make the heart whole again. He would be helping me put it together after the fact.

Hint: It was a challenge to remove the bricks on the inside of the heart with my short finger nails. If you have brick separator, you may want to use it to remove the bricks. If you don’t have one, you may want to leave out some of the bricks as you create the heart. You can know where they will go, but just not put them in.

I told him the activity was called “Mending a Broken Heart”. I am not sure he got the name of the activity, but he sure had fun trying to figure out where all the pieces went to mend the heart.

Some of the pieces might look like they could go in several of the open areas. Some open space looked like one shape and were really made of two. If the right LEGO weren’t placed in the right areas, there would pieces leftover and open areas.My son found that it was easiest to put the bigger LEGOS in first and then move to the smaller areas. To make this puzzle really hard you will want to remove a lot more bricks.

I just love that this one of those Valentine ideas that will stretch a child’s brain. Beyond brain stretching this activity works on fine motor skills, visual discrimination, and the math concepts of flipping and sliding.

Here are some other LEGO learning activities we have done:

LEGO Fraction Games

Geometry Riddles Solved with LEGO

Valentine Ideas – Graphing with Candy Hearts and LEGO

If you do try any of the above LEGO learning activities, please leave me a comment below telling me about it or share a picture of it on my Facebook page.

Geometry Practice- Sides and Vertices Aliens

January 26, 2015 By Deirdre

I never dreamt that JDaniel would come home with a math homework that asked him to find the vertices of each shape on the page. He is first grade! I knew he was working on geometry last week, but I thought he would be focusing on shape identification. This past weekend I crafted some shape aliens. I wanted for us to have a learning activity that gave him geometry practice with finding the vertices and sides of each shape.

Using the sample sides and vertices aliens I made he will then create his own shape aliens this week.. He can pick the shape he wants to focus on and cut it out. Then I can walk him through adding the side and vertex indicators.

As I thought through the steps he would need and the skills he would work on, I came up with a lot. This activity covers several math and fine motor skills.

What are they?

Measuring
Cutting
Counting
Pincher Practice
Pencil Gripping

Let me walk you through how this geometry practice activity is done.

First you will need to measure the length of each of the sides and cut out construction paper strips for each of the sides. You can measure each length with a ruler and the mark that measurement on paper. You could line the edge of your shape on construction paper, mark its length and then cut out a strip that length.

When you have all the side strips cut out, you can glue then onto the edges of the strip. Each strip represents one of the shapes sides or edges. The strips may need to be trimmed to fit their shape perfectly. You could have your children count around the edges from 1 to the last numbered edge of the shape. They could write the number for each side on the side if you like.

Then you will use a pincher grip to pick on a pompom and rub it in glue. One pompom will go in each of the vertices.

With the geometric practice completed it will then time to add facial features to your alien. I think I will precut the antennae and feet for JDaniel. You may decide you want to have your children cutout the antennae and feet for their alien. We will be using construction paper, but I think pipe cleaners or foam would be fun to use too.

We will be using sparkly star stickers for the alien’s nose along with wiggly eyes as I did in the sample aliens for geometric practice. You could easily have your children hand draw the alien’s faces. The alien’s mouth will be drawn on.

We will be displaying our aliens for geometric practice so we can review the number of sides and vertices each of the shapes have.

I concentrated on three basic shapes for this project. Octagons, pentagons, trapezoids, and rhombuses might be fun to try too. Oh! You might want to do a triangle study and have your children create equilateral, right, or isosceles triangles. You early childhood learner may be working on them too.

Here are some other geometric practice activities we have done:

Shape Sheep

Back to School Shape Craft

Dr. Seuss Shape Activity

If you do try any of the above geometry practice activities, please leave me a comment below telling me about it or share a picture of it on my Facebook page.

Thanksgiving Crafts for Kids- Lantern Turkeys

November 3, 2014 By Deirdre

This idea for lantern turkeys is one of those Thanksgiving crafts for kids that works on basic skills and leaves you with a fun decoration for the holiday. The basic body shape of the turkey is made of lantern. The turkey feathers are leaf-shaped. The facial features are a wide variety of traditional and unique closed shapes. Creating each of these works on several cutting skills (straight lines, curved areas, and shapes).

How to Make Thanksgiving Crafts Using a Lantern

Let me walk you through how to make a lantern turkey step by step.

We started by creating a lantern. A length of a paper towel tube cut down by a 1/4 was laid down on a piece of brown construction paper. The construction paper was cut lengthwise just about an inch above the top of the tube. The slats of the lantern were cut out of this piece of construction paper and folded in half. The slats were cut up from the fold to about about an inch and a half away from the top of the paper. ( If you are worried about cutting too close too the top you can fold the top section down about an inch half. Then you can cut up to the folded-down area.) We then glued the top and bottom of the lantern to the cardboard tube. The paper is a little bigger than the tube so, as you glue the edges down you get a little bulge in the middle of the lantern. This bulge is the turkey’s belly.

Then we moved on to make the turkey’s tail feathers. I drew the outline of a leaf on five different colored pieces of construction paper. Then each leaf was cut out. You could easily trace your children’s hands onto paper and cut them out. They would be great tail feathers too. After all the tail feathers had been cut out, they were glued to the back of the cardboard tube. Our feathers were placed near the top of the tube. We tried them lower down and they were hard to see.

Finally, we reached into our scrap paper box and found the paper needed to make facial features for the turkey. The turkey’s head was made by folding brown paper in half and cutting the keyhole shape. Then black and white paper was used to cut out circles for the eyeballs. A yellow triangle was cut out to make the beak. A red flattened-out cloud was cut out to make the waddle.

These Thanksgiving crafts would look great in a cluster or a row on a mantle at home or as a centerpiece at a school celebration. For more Thanksgiving ideas you may want to visit my Thanksgiving Ideas for Kids Pinterest board.

As I mentioned I am participating in the Thanksgiving series with All Things Kids bloggers . Please take a moment to visit their posts too.

Letter and Number Literacy- Fine Motor Webs

September 24, 2014 By Deirdre

Working on letter and number order with learning webs is a simple way to work on letter and number literacy. It is also a great fine motor activity for kids. I love it when I come up with an activity that works on a variety of skills. It is like being able to layer learning.

Letter Literacy Web

I started out creating a letter web. Some of the children I work with in school are struggling with the alphabet. I find them singing a letters of the alphabet as we work with letter order. Why not create a learning tool that would work on letter literacy and fine motor weaving I thought? They could sing while they worked on it, but they wouldn’t have to. More than anything it would help put the alphabet in their visual and muscle memory.

When I thought about putting the web together, I decided that I could write the letters on the small white paper plate and my son could use the hole punch to place a hole beneath each letters. That would give him a fine motor exercise to do. ( He just loves using a hole punch!)

With holes under the letters it was time to try weaving the yarn up and down through the holes. This literacy weaving activity is a little tricky. Sometimes you push the yarn into the holes under the letter and sometimes you have to push the yarn up through the holes. We found it was easier to push the yard down into the holes than it was to push it up into holes as we moved through the alphabet.

When we reached the end of the alphabet, we tied off the yarn. We were left with a really cool letter and web design that I think spiders and kids would love.

Number Literacy Web

The letter literacy web was such fun. We decided to create a number literacy web on a paper plate. We used the numbers up to 20. This gave us a little more space between holes. (The letter literacy web had to have 26 holes.)

I tried to write a number under one of the holes and then turn the plate 90 degrees and write the next number in number order. I did well in some cases and poorly in others. The web would have been prettier with more diagonal numbers or vertical ones. The horizontal numbers created straight lines in the web.

We followed the same weaving steps we did with the letter literacy web. Yarn was woven up and down through the holes beneath the numbers in number order.

Both web ended up being pretty. Both literacy webs worked out to be good ways to review number or letter order. I plan on sharing them with the kindergarten teachers I know.

If you are looking for more web activities, you might want to check out my sight word tape web.

Games for Children- Landing Spot On

July 7, 2014 By Deirdre

Simple household items and office supplies can be used to create games for children that will have them working on fine motor skills and having tons of fun. These Landing Spot On games will allow your kids to do just that.

Supplies for Landing Spot On Games for Children

Platter size paper plate
Colored dot stickers
Large drinking cups (4)
Button
Chopsticks*
Pom poms (colors that match the dots)

*If you want chopsticks like ones we used, there are available on this affiliate link Zehhe Cheater Training Chopsticks for Children . I couldn’t find the chicken chopsticks, but the sheep is available.

How to Put the Game Together

This game board is so easy to put together. You simply place dot stickers an equal distance across and down on the plate. I ended up with four rows and five columns. You could easily arrange the dots any way that you would like. Your children might enjoy creating their own game board design on the plate.

Once you have the dots arranged on the plate, it is time to set the plate on top of the four drinking cups. You can arrange the cups close together or spread them apart so they are more like table legs.

Games for Children

Landing Spot On- Buttons

The goal of this game to get the buttons on the dots. There are several ways you can get the buttons of the dots. The way you have your children try to get the buttons on the spots will depend on how well your children have developed their fine motor skills and their eye hand coordination.

They can:

Place a button on a spot
Drop a button onto a spot
Underhand toss a button onto a spot
Overhand throw a button onto a spot
Frisbee toss a button onto a spot

Landing Spot on- Pom Poms

In this version of the game you are working with pom poms. Pom poms tend to be light and hard to throw so, for this version of the game children can use chopsticks. The chopsticks will give children a little more control of the pom poms.

You can do the same actions that I listed for the buttons. We found the dropping the pom poms or placing them to be the easiest. Frisbee tossing didn’t work well for us, but you may find that you really like frisbee tossing.

We played both games on our deck and on the kitchen table. It worked out well in both locations.

Other Fine Motor Activities

Fine Motor- Fold and Thread Necklace

More Fine Motor and Early Learning ideas can be found on my Early Learning Pinterest board.
Follow JDaniel4’s Mom’s board Early Learning on Pinterest.

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

Kids Fun- Fine Motor Weaving

June 12, 2014 By Deirdre

There are so many skills and concepts that kids work on while fine motor weaving. Kids don’t necessarily realize that when they are weaving. Kids fun activities don’t have to feel like work. They can just feel like creating.

Open Ended Kids Fun

A simple dish drainer and some colored ribbon were all that we used for this kids fun fine motor weaving activity. I left this activity open ended. There wasn’t a set of directions put out with it. It was more of an invitation to learn and create.

A yard of each of the colors ribbon was placed in a plastic bowl along with the dish draining mat on the kitchen table. ( I found the mat at Dollar Tree!)

I sat at the table doing something else and JDaniel wandered in and started weaving. Due to the fact that this kids fun activity was open ended we were able to chat as the ribbon went up and down through the slats of the dish drainer. When one ribbon ran out, a new length of ribbon was used. I think it ended up looking great.

Younger children may need quiet as the weave. Chatting would distract them and may even frustrate them. Putting the material out of a workspace and letting them find them would be fine.

Skill Focused Fine Motor Weaving

You could easily give oral or visual directions to children as to what you want them to create.

Here are some ideas I came up with:

They could weave every other row on the dish draining mat.
You could have them weave three rows in each color of ribbon with an empty row in between each color.
You could cut the ribbons into one-foot lengths. The kids fun might we creating an ABC, AABC, or an ABBC pattern with the shorter lengths of ribbon.
Kids could create vertical patterns with the ribbon.
The ribbon could be woven vertically and horizontally.
Kids could have fun replicating designs that you have taken photos and put out for them to look at.

As you can see the possibilities are endless. I bet you can come up with your own ideas of how kids can use these materials for fine motor work.

Other Kids Fun Weaving Materials:

We used ribbon to weave through the dish draining mat. I like how easily ribbon slips in and out of the slats.

Here are some other materials you could use to weave with:

Tall weeds from the yard
Pipe cleaners
Yarn
Strips of construction paper
Strips from a paper bag
Rick rack

The thinner the material you use to weave with the harder it will be to weave. Kids will really have to work on their pincher grip to weave with yarn or weeds. I selected a wide ribbon because it would be easier to hold. A thin ribbon would be challenging to weave with too. Patriotic colors were chose for this kids fun activity, but you could select any colors or pattern you like. You could put out different themed patterns during different times of the year.

If you don’t have a Dollar Tree near you or drying mat you can use, you could use a cookie cooling rack. We used a cookie cooling rack and pipe cleaners for a similar activity.

Both activities work on fine motor skills, focus, patterning, planning, and visual discrimination.

If you like this fine motor activity, here are some more you will want to try with your children.

Paper Plate Octopus

Magnetic Astronaut and Tape Rocket

Homemade Drop Box

Letter and Number Literacy Webs

Spider Web Fine Motor Activity

I have a number of fine motor and other early learning activities pinned to my Early Learning Pinterest board. Feel free to check them out!

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

Cinco De Mayo Taco- Fun Activity for Kids

April 28, 2014 By Deirdre

Cinco de Mayo is a celebrated May the 5th in Mexico and many parts of the United States. When I think of Mexican food I think of tacos so, I created a textured taco learning activity for young learners to explore while celebrating Cinco de Mayo. It uses office and craft supplies. I know you will love how easy it is to make.

What materials did I use?

Small yellow mailing envelopes
Green construction paper
Red, orange, green and black felt
Dark blue or black buttons
Glue
Scissors

How did we put it together?

I drew an arc onto the yellow mailing envelope and JDaniel cut it out. Given that the envelope has two sides and a connected base it made it the perfect taco material. If you don’t have mailing envelopes available, you could cut the arc out of a folded piece of yellow or tan construction paper. The corners of the taco were folded in to allow the tacos to stay open.

Then we cut wiggly strips out of the construction paper, felt, and foam sheets. Some materials were easier to cut them others. The felt was a little tricky and needed to be cut a single layer at a time. We were able cut several layers of the foam sheets and construction paper at a time. The hope was that the wiggly strips would look like shredded taco ingredients for our Cinco de Mayo activity.

Out of the red felt we cut small half circles. Each half circle had two triangles cut of it. The circles were supposed to look like small pieces of tomato.

Finally we cut cloud like shapes out of the green construction paper. The shapes were larger that the strips we had cut out.

I put buttons out for us to use for the textured taco too. (We use buttons a lot for learning activities so, we have bunch of them.)

Wait! I told you what the red felt half circles were supposed to be, but I didn’t tell you what the other textured taco materials represented. Let me do that now:

Tomatoes- red felt semicircles and full circles

Olives- dark blue or black buttons

Lettuce- green construction paper clouds

Cheese- wiggly cut strips orange felt

Hamburger Meat- black felt clouds

Constructing the Taco

This is a picture of the original Cinco De Mayo Game with black felt meat strips.

I had made a spinner that displayed the five taco ingredients. We each took turns spinning the spinner to see what we could add to the taco. If the spinner landed on an ingredient we had already added to the taco, we lost our turn. We kept playing until we had added one of each of the ingredients to our taco.

You can download the Cinco De Mayo- Taco Building Activity Spinner

The idea of this activity was work on cutting skills, interact with various textures, and work on taking turns. I am sure there are a lot of other skills we covered while creating it.

Building Background

You may want to read a book about Cinco De Mayo before starting the activity. Below you will find several wonderful Cinco De Mayo books.

The links below are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Halloween Craft- Button Pumpkin Face

October 25, 2013 By Deirdre

How Big Could Your Pumpkin Grow? out of the library. From the book’s cover I really didn’t know if it would be about two boys growing a big pumpkin or something else. I asked JDaniel to predict what the book was going to be about based on the cover. He thought it could be about growing pumpkins too. After we read the book, we did a Halloween craft I know you will love.

When we started the book, we found that book shares various places in the United States big pumpkins could visit. We traveled to a hot air balloon festival in New Mexico, to Vermont to see pumpkin boat races, and to Mount Rushmore to name a few. It was fun to see giant pumpkins side by side monuments and landmarks.

There is an area in the back of the book that shares a couple of facts about each place. We haven’t taken out a map to find each state and where the landmark is in each state yet, but I think we will.

What did we do to explore the book?

Halloween Craft

We made a button pumpkin face. Last year I bought a bag of colored buttons. (We have used them over and over again for learning games and crafts.) We sorted through the bag to find all the green buttons. The green buttons would be used to create the pumpkin face.

Then I pulled out come pipe cleaners and some orange grid circles. ( I found the orange circles at a dollar store in the houseware area. I think they were supposed to be coasters)

We tried arranging the button in various ways on the circle to create different eye, nose and mouth designs. Different sized buttons created very different looks.

When JDaniel found a face that he liked, we worked at adding one facial at a time. A section of pipe cleaner was threaded through two of each button holes. The ends of the pipe cleaner were then poked through the holes in the grid. Threading the pipe cleaner into the button holes wasn’t easy. It ended up being a tricky fine motor activity.

When the pipe cleaner was through the holes, the circle was turned over and the ends of the pipe cleaner were twisted and flattened. The eyes and nose buttons were put in place using this technique.

For the mouth several buttons were placed on a pipe cleaner. The pipe cleaner started at the bottom of the first button and continued being pushed up and down through the buttons’ holes until several buttons were on the pipe cleaner. Both ends of the pipe cleaner were pushed through the holes nearest them when we placed the mouth on top of the circle. JDaniel created little hooks at the ends of the pipe cleaner to hold them in place.

I thought we were done when the smile was in place, but I was told the pumpkin needed a stem. I decided to take a picture and post it on Instagram to see what other people thought about the pumpkin. The answers came back unanimous. A stem was needed. We threaded a couple of button onto a pipe cleaner and attached them to the top of the pumpkin.

The stem does look cute. JDaniel and my Instagram followers should be happy with how it stands out.

If you like this Halloween craft, you will love the crafts found on my Crafts for Kids Pinterest board.

I have decided to ask you to link your posts to the Read.Explore.Learn. Facebook page instead of running a link up. I hope you will stop by and share your children’s book related activities there.

Disclaimer: This post does contain affiliate links.

Follow JDaniel4’s Mom on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.

Chinese New Year Activities and Crafts for Kids

February 8, 2013 By Deirdre

We had the best time reading Long-Long’s New Year and doing Chinese New Year activities! JDaniel really enjoys the book Long-Long’s New Year. It is about a very special little boy that seeks to make his family’s celebration. Despite having a coin that he is yearning to spend on himself while shopping with his grandfather, he waits and gets special things for his family. The illustrations in this book are lovely and so is its message.

Chinese New Year Activities and Crafts

Chop Stick Transfer Buffet

While browsing through Living Montessori Now’s weekly link-up, I noticed a wide variety of posts on transferring objects with chopsticks. Many had some kind of string or yarn.

JDaniel loves to use these chopsticks so, I created a chopstick transfer buffet for him. He was able to move packing peanuts, color straw segments, and yarn to create a delicious bowl full of fun.

Cupcake Liner Fortune Cookies

I found directions on how to make fortune cookies using cupcake liners on several sites online. Each used a wire down the middle to help bend and mold the fortune cookie. We didn’t have any wire at our house so, we used foil cupcake liners instead.

When I tried to take a picture of the steps we took to make the fortune cookies, the glare of the foil was terrible. I quickly grabbed some snowman liners to show you what we did.

We folded the cupcake liner inside out and then placed a staple in the center of the liner about one-half an inch in.

Then we turned the cupcake liner outside in and pushed in the center a little to make an indention. Finally, we staple the outside edges. We left openings at the top of the sides to slip the messages in.

Chinese Snake Shape Craft

JDaniel had the best time creating a snake from a box filled with triangles, parallelograms, and squares I had cut out for him. He started with the tail and worked his way up to the head. I loved watching him create and think through this craft.

Chinese Zodiac Animal Hunt

JDaniel has a wide variety of animals in his room. I printed out a Chinese Zodiac page for Activity Village and had him search his room for as many of them as he could find. He wasn’t able to find a tiger, a goat, or a rat. He really didn’t find a dragon either, but he pointed out that dinosaurs and dragons might be related. We decided the dinosaur could count as a dragon.

It was really fun to see him search through all his things to find the ones he did find. Each time he came across one it was like he was finding a hidden treasure.

Snake Snack

Crescent Roll Snake for Chinese New Year

We tried to follow a pattern for a snake pattern I found online, but it was really hard to cut the crescent rolls into the right shapes. I ended up trimming some of them with a knife after we cooked them to try and get close. Oval is not a tangram shape, but they really made great eyes for the snake.