Fine motor fun

We have been working on some fall themed activities and I wanted to share a few. 

Our wonderful Miss D. brought in these fun bug catchers and we put them to use in a few different ways. 

First we used them to pick up pom pom balls and then I introduced corn kernels in this invitation to test their skills picking up something smaller.

Miss D. got these bug catchers through oriental trading company but I was unable to find them on their website but here are the same ones on amazon! 

We did some counting with pumpkin seeds...

and put our fine motor skills to the test by putting the spider rings on the dowels.

We also used our patterning trays with our spider rings.

We used our fingers to form and roll out play-dough...

and made silly faces.

For this project we filled our bags with shredded paper and tied them tight with a pipe cleaner...

We painted them orange

and made some adorable pumpkins.

We displayed them on our wall.

We did apple tasting and created our own unique apples.

Miss D. and the kids created these awesome trees by painting the trunk of the tree with a paint brush and then using pine needles to paint the branches!! I love using new materials to paint with!! They added some tissue paper to create their apples.

We made some corn for our corn stalk by gluing on corn kernels.

Each of these activities are great to strengthen those fine motor muscles to help with writing and cutting!!

A few other fun projects we did over fall break. (we are year around)

 Growing Indian Corn

Did you know Indian Corn grows... Awesome right! After last years fail of not taking pictures, you can see that post here 

I was determined to document our Indian corn this year!!! 

Day one: planted in soil.

Week two: We keep this in our classroom and put it out in the sunlight each day so I had to take the pumpkin out because it began to mold.

Week three: The kids are loving it!

Look at our corn now. !!!! 

Hope you all have a great weekend! 

-Taylor

Preschool skills

These chopstick helpers are AWESOME!!!!

Looking for a great way to strengthen those fine motor muscles?

Chopsticks, pom pom balls, and a tray. 

My kiddos love this and are getting really good at using the chopsticks and can now pick up the smaller pom pom balls!!!

 

I wanted to get an idea of where the kiddos in my class were with their letter recognition. I put out some letter cards and told the kids that we were going to go on a letter hunt. They were to look around the room and find letter and match them to the card. I was able to see which children may need more support and practice with letter recognition without having to test them with flashcards!!! 

They did so well! The found letters from puzzles, the magnet board and from the letter beads we have.

Then we got to put them all away! Great sorting activity! 

Another easy way to set up a sorting activity is to simply put out colored paper for the kids to match/sort. This is how I set up our independent table in our table time rotation.

Magnetic Trays: Letter matching

Today in my preschool class at table time our curriculum activity was a letter hunt game. We extended this into our free play time and the kids really got into it! 

These are uppercase foam letters with magnets on the back. I wrote uppercase letters on paper and placed them on the table and on the cookie sheets for the kids to match. 

Here is a link to buy the Uppercase foam magnetic letters similar to the ones we use.

 Some kids spelled out their names 

Others found their name cards and friends name cards and copied the letters from there.

 They even started to write their own letters on the small paper to then place the magnets on!

 Lots of learning going on today!!! 

Here is a link for lowercase letters if you have older children who can use them for spelling practice!

I love using cookie sheets because it gives the kids their own work space and of course it makes using magnets even more fun!! We use these cookie sheets at our independent table for all sorts of activities! 

prewriting skill building

Helping children develop their writing skills through multisensory play-based instruction is a great way to introduce writing.  Activities with hands-on materials address different senses to teach correct formation, spacing, sequencing, and other writing skills.
Children move, touch, feel, and manipulate real objects as they learn the habits and skills essential for writing. Here are a few great ways to get started with pre-writing**
  

wooden box (or tray of some sort) sugar (or flour or salt) and a few upper case letters.

We did a few pre-strokes, straight lines 

curves and circles

Then we used our finger and traced the letter on the paper first and then made the letter in the sugar.

After a few times he got it all on his own***

It's fun to roll dough snakes and make capital letters and numbers. These are from Handwriting Without Tears you can buy them here. Or make your own, just print out large capital letters and laminate them. Let your kids roll play-dough to form the letters.

Children form capital letters using magnetic stamps. Magnetic chalk-like writing tool promotes important fine motor skills and lets children form letters/numbers on their own. Basically a manga-doodle with curved shapes and lines to create each uppercase letter. Another great product from Handwriting Without Tears, you can find these here

.

Another great sensory way to learn to form letters are sandpaper cards. You could make your own but I found these and they are fairly reasonable. It would take so much less time then making them yourself* I found them here.                       Keep in mind that young children learning pre-writing skills should focus solely on forming uppercase letters only.