Fine motor skills

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fine motor skills
This week we’ve got ***10 tips for developing fine motor skills: ideas to help children strengthen their grip and improve the flexibilty of their fingers. These are important things for young children to be working on so they can enjoy being more independent, fastening their own buttons and zips. Fine motor skills are needed for writing and drawing too and there are lots of fun ways you can encourage your pre-schooler.

Tip #1 Encouraging your child’s fine motor skills gets them ready for lots of things from tying shoe laces to holding a pencil.

Tip #2 If your child’s not interested in pencils try using chalkboards and sticks in sand instead. Use water and a paint brush too.

Tip #3 Fastening buttons and zips are great fine motor practice so try to allow extra time to let your child fasten up their own coat.

Tip #4 Baking helps children’s fine motor skills: as they knead dough and rub butter into flour they strengthen their fingers.

Tip #5 From around the age of three you can try using scissors: try making these paper lanterns which are great cutting practise.

Tip #6 Choose good scissors & try thin card not paper at first. Try these cutting skills ideas from TeachPreschool.

Tip #7 Lacing is great practice too.  It’s easy to make your own lacing games: try this lacing apple from No Time For Flash Cards.

Tip #8 Peeling stickers is perfect for little fingers. Buy some with your favourite characters on and get sticking.

Tip #9 How about clothespegs for building finger strength? Hang up the washing or make a number line .

Tip #10 Thread a pasta necklace, fill pots using tongs, have a go with tweezers: all great ways to develop little fingers.

Does your child find buttons and zips easy to fasten? How do you help them practise?

Check out our archive for lots more fine motor skills ideas

Encouraging writing

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A great way to get children writing is to send a postcard – to a friend, to grandma, even to themselves. We found this homemade postcard on the way home from school today and as you can see someone has spent a lot of time and effort designing the front and using joined up handwriting for their message. It was lying on the pavement but the address is on it and it’s on our way to school so we’re going to deliver it tomorrow morning.

postcard

Even young children can take part in sending a postcard – drawing, ‘writing’, adding their name, sticking on the stamp, taking a trip to the post office. It helps them understand writing has a purpose. With older children having a penpal or starting a postcard collection can be a fun way to encourage reluctant writers to have a try.

Who could your children send a postcard too?

Happily shared with No Time for Flash Cards and ABCand123

Make an alphabet chart

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While we were making our first autumn craft of the year on Monday we also added to the sensory alphabet we’re working on. Once she’d satisfied her need to do some sticking, L made some leaf rubbings using wax crayons. We cut them out and used them as the background for our ‘l is for leaf’ picture.

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>>> Download our guide to ABCs and 123s here 

 

Crafting with children is such a good way to help them develop important skills: picking out all the autumn colours from the crayon pot works on classification skills, important for maths and literacy, and using scissors to cut out leaves works on fine motor skills.

We also made a ‘h is for hole’ a while ago – turns out a hole-punch is fascinating when you’re 4! Here’s how out alphabet is coming along.

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 My guide to ABCs and 123s

Do you have a young child who is learning their ABCs and 123s, and do you want to make their learning fun? Our ABCs and 123s resource of mulitsensory, play-based letter and math activities is just what you need. See more here.

Autum leaf crafts

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I love autumn. I love the feeling of change and the crispness of the air but even better than that is the opportunity for lots of beautiful autumn crafts. Take a walk along a leafy lane with a pre-schooler and you simply can’t help having fun and learning something new. Talk about why the leaves are falling, what colours you can see, the different shapes of the leaves. Do you know the names of the trees? Can you catch a leaf as it falls? Collect some favourite shapes and colours and bring them home to make a leaf picture.

I’d thought we might do some leaf rubbings using wax crayons but L wanted to glue. Here’s the picture she made – with some letters sneaked in too.

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Happily shared with Kids Get Crafty at Red Ted Art

Does starting school mean the end of play?

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Back in January I resolved to make 2010 our Year of Play. I’ve been thinking about this again this month as L has started at school. In last week’s Play Academy link-up I talked about wanting to make sure the girls still have lots of opportunity for playing, as well as schooling. So this weeks Twitter Tips are dedicated to having a playful return to school. The Twitter Tips get tweeted on a Friday at 8.30pm and in previous weeks they’ve started great twitter conversations, with people swapping ideas. The main thing I love about blogging is it being a forum to get inspiration and encouragement from others, so please feel free to add your own ideas in the comments or on our Facebook page. Join in, swap ideas, go play!

How to have a playful Back to School

#goplay Twitter Tip #1If you’re using after school clubs check how playful they are: do they offer free play after a structured school day

#goplay Twitter Tip #2Make the school run fun: cycle, scoot  or play i-spy. Leave a little earlier to let the kids play a bit before class

#goplay Twitter Tip #3 Set up a play invitation in the morning to entice the kids to play before they switch on the TV

#goplay Twitter Tip #4 Rediscover some old school favourites such as conkers or fortune tellers

#goplay Twitter Tip #5 Consider how many clubs to join so after school play time isn’t lost in a busy schedule.

#goplay Twitter Tip #6 Encourage playground fun by packing a skipping rope in the book bag. Ready for Ten has a great skipping tutuorial

#goplay Twitter Tip #7 Plan family time for the weekend: it doesn’t have to be expensive or extravagant but do make sure it happens.

#goplay Twitter Tip #8 Consider screen time. Could your kids live without TV for an hour, a day, a week? What could they play instead?

#goplay Twitter Tip #9 Locate the park nearest your school and stop off any day day you can on the way home. Enjoy some #playoutdoors

#goplay Twitter Tip#10 Instead of only setting up a homework area set up a play area too. Add untoys & let them #goplay

How do you feel about the balance between school and play time? How do you manage homework at the weekend? Do your kids attend a playful school?

Happily shared with Top Ten Tuesday.

Top Ten {Tuesday}

Alphabet games

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Alphabet games

L is getting more and more interested in letters and we’re using our magnetic alphabet set to play some alphabet games. There are lots of ways you can use letters of course, depending on how old your children are,  but here are two easy games to use with those just starting to recognise letters.

I spy my name

Put a selection of letters on the fridge door (making sure they are all the right way up) and ask your child if they can hunt out the ones which are in their name. We’ve been writing L’s name on drawings, coat pegs, cards to send to friends and so on ever since she was tiny so she’s had lots of chance to get to know what her name looks like. I sound out the letters of her name as I write them and she has learned the sounds, order and shape of them pretty much just by observing this. A child’s name is a great place to start working with letters: they’re pretty ego-centric so they like it being all about them! We always use a capital first letter and lowercase for all the others (so I replicate this with the fridge magnets too).

Letter snap

We put all the letters on the fridge and I select one and say ‘this is an ‘a” and ask L if she can make a match. Snap! She likes to take a turn choosing a letter for me to match – which lets me see how many letters she knows the sound for.

Have you got a set of magnetic letters on your fridge door? How do you play with yours?


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