Showing posts with label Fine Motor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fine Motor. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Halloween Sensory Bin


Lots of choking hazards, so children under 3 AND children of any age still putting items in their mouth, are only allowed to play under direct, strict supervision.


Learning activities:
  • Sorting by orange/black/white
  • Sorting by pumpkins/skulls/bats
  • Sorting by item
  • Counting to 5/10/20+
  • Matching bugs
  • Stick puppets
  • Retelling "5 Little Pumpkins"
  • Role playing "Witches Brew"
  • Retelling "5 Little Skeletons"
  • Make a skeleton
  • Patterning
  • Scoop/pour/transferring
What's in it?
  • Main fill is black and white beans
  • Qtips for bones
  • Orange/black/white pom poms
  • 2 bags of bugs (Dollar Tree)
  • Skull/pumpkin/bat erasers (Dollar Tree)
  • Gold pipe cleaners
  • Mini caldrons (Dollar Tree)
  • Stick puppets, Frankenstein and pumpkin


  • White cloth pieces
  • Bats (Dollar Tree)
  • Orange/black/white feathers
  • Stick ghost puppets
  • Bag of plastic eyeballs (Dollar Tree)
  • Bag of plastic skulls (Dollar Tree)


  • Packing peanuts for ghosts or bones
  • Large styrofoam pumpkins



 Mr. R: "The beans are his bones and muscles."


 A favorite activity of the 2 year olds.


They figured out that they could take apart the eyeballs, fill them with beans, and put them back together to make mini maracas.

 I found that they really liked just tearing apart the packing peanuts. Still a great fine motor activity and since they are free..."Go for it!"
preschool, daycare, pre-k, child care, childcare, Halloween, sensory, sensory bin, learning, activity, activities, counting, dramatic play, child, children, kids, homeschool, homeschooling, boy, girl, scary, ghost, skull, witch, bat, spider, skeleton, pumpkin

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Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Valentine Art Piece Bag


Sometimes our art is organic. Such as our Valentine's bags.

Miss H brought her small heart punch from home. Miss A wore a heart grid top. So of course we had to combine these into an art piece.


 We've been working on multiplication with the bigs, so I took advantage of that aspect of this activity as well.

 Since I knew this activity would be time consuming - we only had the one punch and each child had to punch 12 hearts - so I did the folding of the paper to provide the 3X4 grid for the children to glue their hearts into.

Two big aspects of this project were taking turns, and preparing for your turn.

 If the punch got to you and you didn't have your paper picked out, then it went on by. It's not often that the children are rushed to make decisions, so it was very interesting for me to observe that aspect of their behavior and capabilities and to see how their thinking and planning changed/developed as the activity went on. I think it was a very beneficial experience.

 It was also good experience in fine motor control, and placement of the paper within the punch, which was not clear for easy viewing, so some critical thinking was having to take place.

One of the things I observed, was that the wiser ones would pick out several pieces of paper, have them ready, and then punch out multiple hearts when their turn came. Thinking they were doing something potentially wrong, they were a little sneaky, and very fast at it. 

 Impressive. I didn't catch on quickly, since I was helping the younger ones. Since I had never said that you could only punch out one heart at a time, I felt it was just efficient and sound judgement.

As the punch moved on, the children used glue sticks to paste their hearts into individual squares on their grids. Good hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills.

 Once done, I realized that the size of paper I had used would fit on our white lunch bags and make cute Valentine bags for our Valentine exchange. The children thought it was a wonderful idea, so we did that.

It worked out great!
We had a wonderful Valentine's party with some special treats for the children from the parents, and some special gifts for me!



I have AMAZING clients and kiddos!
Follow Connie -'s board Valentines Theme on Pinterest. Tags: Valentine, craft, cut, paste, math, learning, bags, box, Valentine's, homeschooling, art, process, preschool, pre-k, daycare, child, care


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Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Monday Journaling for Preschool


When talking about assessments, I mentioned that we do journaling every Monday. I start this as soon as they are old enough to hold and manipulate a crayon, without eating the majority of it.

 We are now using this journaling page that I created, and have available FREE in my TPT store.
Preschool Journaling Page
As mentioned also in the writing post, I assess these using a couple of matrices that I keep handy.

 This one from Heidi at Heidi's Songs...

And this Drawing Development in Children chart beautiful illustrated by Susan Donley.


To see how important it is to do this regularly, and the progression you can observe, here is the art work of Mr. G over the last 3 1/2 years.
 8/30/11 First Journal Page 16 months

3/19/12 First Journal Description - "It's a bicycle." 23 months
 9/4/12 Less scribbling and more intentional drawing. 
2 years 5 months
 3/18/13 Progression to Lines 3 years
 4/10/13 Progression to Intentional Circles 3 years

 Note that progression from lines to circles for this child occurred within a few weeks. If we didn't journal every Monday, I would have missed that rapid leap.
 7/15/13 Adding Letters to Drawings 3 years 3 months

 Notice that movement into letter formation happened within 3 months of intentional line and circle drawing. Drawing is a natural extension into writing.
12/2/13 Extensive journal entries begin at the same time as the first identifiable figure is drawn. 3 years 8 months.

 "He went to his house and he was cold when he was walking. Then he arrived to his home. He was walking long ago."
1/13/14 Some times the simplest of drawings can have the most intense meanings. 3 years 9 months. 

"Me and Cora [his dog]. She is helping me with cleaning my room. She is licking me because she loves me."

 1/20/14 Progression of drawing from just figures to object representations. 3 years 9 months. 

 "These are the stairs I am walking up. Mommy is gone. The dog is licking me on Christmas Eve. This is the stockings. Cora is kissing me with licking me and daddy let me carry her upstairs. I feel happy."
5/12/14 Adding in environmental components such as sky. 
4 years 1 month. 

"Me and Blake and one of our wheelbarrows and my daddy. I'm hugging daddy."

12/29/14 Combination of skills utilized for random drawing. Practicing. 4 years 8 months. The older they get, the more specific the detail and the more they add in life experiences their parents may wish would stay unrepresented.  

"Triangle, square, trapezoid and a BIG G. Two Ps and two Rs. A man with X shirts holding a beer cup with beer inside."

LOL

When I send the children off to kindergarten, I send their binders home. I love looking back over the years and remembering the excitement I experienced every time I noticed something new, moving, or amazing in their journaling. It's always a joy to hear their stories.
Tags: homeschooling, writing, fine motor, cognitive, development, developmentally appropriate, drawing, writing, journal, journaling, speech, language, literacy, reading, grammar, teaching, theme, unit, art, hand eye coordination, crossing the midline, kindergarten, prek, pre k, child care, daycare

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Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Christmas Activities and Crafts


Here are a few of the activities and crafts we did this Christmas season.

SNOWBALL TOSS & GRAPH

Using our bins from the block area, I made up the point value numbers, laminated them, and used packing tape to put them on the buckets. The first day worked counting by fives and multiples of fives for the bigs, and number recognition of 5 units for the littles. We changed it up on other days for 2's and 10's. 

Skills: Hand-eye coordination, taking turns, following directions, spatial awareness, number recognition, multiples, graphing, interpreting a graph, ordinal count



CHRISTMAS TREE ORNAMENTS

These are darling keepsakes. I used hotglue for the popsicle sticks. They chose their color and added the gems. I cut out their pictures and added them to a background of scrapbooking paper. The date is simply written on with a fine Sharpie. They used a brown marker to color in the popsicle piece for the truck if they wished.




REINDEER CRAFT

 More product than process, but it's really cute. Traced a handprint on folded brown construction paper and cut out. Bigs could do their own cutting. 

 Cut two triangles from a sheet of brown construction paper by marking the long sides into thirds and using 2/3 of each side as the bottom of the reindeer. They folded over the top of the triangle, and added the eyes and nose. The bigs could have pom pom noses if they wanted. The big girls wanted to make Clarise, so of course that meant a BLACK nose and bow. The littles I let use the google eyes, but not the pom poms, simply because I know what works and doesn't with them. Pom poms would not work.

Big Miss H asked if she could make her reindeer into a mask. Huh. SURE! Miss A also thought that was a wonderful idea.





REINDEER SANDWICHES and KIWI ORNAMENTS

Yeah, it might be a stretch on the ornament piece, but they bought it. I just used a large heart cookie cutter to cut out the sandwiches for breakfast.


SUGAR CONE CHRISTMAS TREES

Thinned down frosting in squirt bottles, M&M's, sprinkles, and candies. Only the big kids got to do this. They had fun, but it was MESSSSSSYYYYYYY! Eating them was a whole 'nother problem. Most of it got thrown away. I do not recommend this activity for anything other than using them on a gingerbread house display.

JINGLE BELL DANCING

One of those super simple, surprisingly amazing activities. The all LOVED this one. Just jingle bells in a container of water with a strong magnet wand to move them around. Note that the jingle bells were rusting pretty good after a few weeks in the water, but the use they got out of it was worth it.


SNOWMAN PANCAKES

Okay, so this was my first effort at pancake art, so give me a break. The kiddos loved them and thought I did a great job.


And of course, check out the posts on our Christmas Dramatic Play Area,
and our Christmas Sensory Bin from this year.

Tags: child care, daycare, kindergarten, preschool, pre-k, craft, activity, math, Christmas, holiday, season, theme, unit, homeschool, homeschooling, education
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