My top 10 favourite fine motor skill activities for toddlers

1. sorting activities - you could sort anything basically from beans to pegs to duplo pieces and according to sizes, colour, texture etc. and even do sorting during bath time! :)
Here are some ideas:

• http://www.simplymommie.com/2010/05/sorting-beans.html
• http://www.simplymommie.com/2010/11/sorting-pompoms.html
• http://www.simplymommie.com/2010/11/more-sorting-activities.html

2. stringing beads

3. lacing - I made my own, but you could easily get these from shops as well.

4. tonging
http://www.simplymommie.com/2010/11/tonging-part-i.html
http://www.simplymommie.com/2010/11/tonging-part-ii.html

5. scooping water

6. transferring rice grains/ alphabet pasta or even water!

7. shelling eggs

8. slotting coins

9. pegging

10. juicing - this will be one of the kids' favourites! There's even a reward after the activity!

Linked up with:

Activities to go with The Perfect Square by Michael Hall

The Perfect Square tells the story of a square who made the best of whatever happened to him and eventually found great contentment being the square that he was. A wonderful read for not just children, but adults as well, a reminder that no matter what happens to us, we make the best of the situation and find our own happiness as the square did eventually at the end of the story.

Now here's what we did for this interesting book - not as comprehensive as my other posts on literature-based learning though! :)

We tried to replicate the story to see if we could re-create the square in those ways in the book.

We did this activity over a few days as it requires quite a bit of time and stamina.

Using a piece of drawing block, I cut out 6 squares and got her to paint them in the colours the square appeared on the book.

We used water colours so that we could get a softer feel and blend of colours

For younger children, this would be a good time to teach colours apart from just doing the painting.

Completed squares in the process of drying

The squarish book and our paintings

Using the hole puncher for the first time

Arranging her shapes she cut out from her square to form the picture in the book

Done!

More fine motor skills involved - tearing the square into pieces

drawing in the details found in the book

Fill in the missing words with the stickers provided

Pasting in the missing words

Our completed version

Vocabulary

These are the words/ phrases I found that needed some explaining/ revision:

'shattered', 'babbled', 'torn into scraps' vs 'shredded in strips', 'ripped', 'crumpled', 'wrinkled', 'confining', 'rigid', 'cramped'


Extension activity:

Piet Mondrian-inspired art:

I pasted black tape on half a sheet of drawing block, set up the colours that Piet Mondrian used in his famous work, and got her to view examples of Piet Mondrian art on the tablet, leaving a sample next to her so that she could focus on her task.

Painting squares and rectangles

The completed piece of art which is now the cover of her A4-sized scrapbook where I stick the pictures and paintings she does in school and at home.

Other ideas that you can tap on after reading the book (for younger children):

• Days of the week - you can re-read The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle as well for reinforcement
• Colours 
• Shapes 
• Story sequencing - ask the child what happened to the square on the various days and what the square became as a result.

Hope you have fun!

Activities to go with Corduroy by Don Freeman

Corduroy is a wonderful book to read to a child who is learning about the world around her. It tells the tale of a toy bear in a departmental store who waits every day for someone to bring him home. When a little girl finally looks straight into his eyes and decides that that's the bear she wants - despite the lost button on his green overalls (i.e. outward imperfection) -  and eventually brings him home with her (bought with her own pocket money), it is clearly a sweet little story about loving someone for who he is, and not his appearance. She eventually sews on a button on his overalls, but not because she doesn't love him the way he is, but so that he'd feel more comfortable. 

It is also a story packed with different emotions and lets the child in on the concepts of adventure and dreams - ideas that the older preschooler would be able to relate to. The bear is sad that no one ever seemed to want a bear in green overalls, and when he realises that he has a missing button, he goes on a quest to search for his button after the departmental store is closed for the night. In this adventure of his, he expresses some of his hopes and dreams (e.g. "This must be a palace. I've always wanted to live in a palace") and this continues all the way till the end of the book, where he finds a friend in the little girl, and becomes a happy, contented bear. :) This is a book I'd definitely revisit when Alicia is older so that we can discuss the abstract concepts. 

Here are some of the simple activities we did in relation to the book:

(i) dramatic play using a bear (which I dressed up to look like Corduroy) - use the bear to act out the story for the tot:

I happened to have a bear in overalls - so I sewed green felt over his denim overalls! If you are good at sewing, you can sew a bear from scratch!

Before and after:

(ii) button sorting (sounds like a super boring activity, but she was hooked on it for a long long time!)

A pack of buttons I picked up from the pasar malam

we used the egg carton, some small plates meant for dipping sauce (from this activity), and the original plastic container it came in for the sorting activity

(iii) Button snake - a common learning aid to teach tots to button and unbutton

Attach a button on one end of the ribbon and another button on the other end (or you could sew that end of the ribbon to one of the pieces of felt). I put buttons on both ends so that Alicia could have access to the felt either way. Cut out square pieces of felt (or any other shape - e.g. bear, leaves) then cut a slit (about as big as the button you are using) in the middle of each of the pieces.

Alicia with the button snake

busy buttoning

(iv) Identifying the right button (matching)

a short simple activity for her to identify the matching button which she completed with ease - you could discuss shapes, colours and sizes during this activity

carefully placing the button on the overalls

yeah!

then she decided to do some quiet reading... :P

(v) Sewing on the missing button!

As the story ends with the little girl sewing on the button for Corduroy (as seen below),

I made this learning aid for her to learn to sew on the missing button!:

The 'needle' is actually a modified toothpick (which I made for this learning aid)

Alicia sewing away!

 sew fun!:P

(vi) learning about patterns:


You could use the buttons to form shapes:

or teach your preschooler about patterns (and identifying which comes next - don't use too many colours for a start) - more suitable for slightly older tots:

which comes next?

Other fun activities can be found from this link.

Have fun!

Fun with syringes

Alicia was down with flu earlier in the year and she's since been hooked on syringes - she even requests for water to be fed via syringe sometimes, long after she recovered from flu! Well, as long as water gets into that little mouth, that's more important for me! :P

Since she loves syringes, I thought well, why not just let her play with them and figure out how syringes work? It makes a great activity for her since she loves waterplay and syringes have just become the newest addition to the little basin!

All you need is a small tub of water, a couple of syringes and you're good to go! :) 

Learning to use a syringe can be really interesting for a tot - learning the mechanics of getting the water into the syringe and of course, their favourite part would be to 'shoot' the water out from it! 

My little one posing for cam:

Done with posing, she's getting ready for the activity

Learning to cut with Crayola's scissors

I finally got her a pair of proper scissors. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the pair I saw at Borders which claims that the blades of the scissors will not cut skin so I had to settle for another pair... and well, I decided on getting Crayola's. It costs no more than $4, comes in a few different colours and it's good for both righties and lefties. It's got a blunt tip but no promises that it won't cut skin... :P 

Alicia's not very good at the cutting as she lacks strength to move the blades of the scissors continuously - the prerequisite of smooth cutting. What she does is pull 'open' the scissors with both hands and then get her the scissors in the right position for making a cut with her right hand. 

Remember to supervise your little one closely when she's using the scissors! :P

Dress Up Bear

This Dress Up Bear is the quick, simple and attractive solution to practising fine motor skills for tots and preschoolers. It definitely beats practising those fine motor skills on boring Montessori frames!

The Bear's features:

• a zip
• a snap button
• a (normal) big button
• a velcro (pocket)
• a buckle
• (shoe)laces (for practising tying ribbons)

Here are some photos of my little one practising hard:

Trying hard to undo the button:

Zip up! Zip down! Zip, zip, zip! :P

It's buckle time!

Ta-da!

Here's the pic of the Dress Up Bear:

Stringing beads

More hands-on activities and this time it's stringing of beads!

It's obvious that this activity is to practise fine motor skills so I don't think any elaboration is needed. :)

This activity is not suitable for tots still mouthing items.

*Activity first conducted on 31 Oct 2010*


All you need for this activity are:

• some beads
• a short piece of yarn
• a toothpick
• masking tape

1. Trim off the sharp points of the toothpick. 
2. Wrap a small piece of masking tape around one of the trimmed points. 
3. Wrap a small piece of masking tape around the yarn and the other point of the toothpick to hold them together (as shown above). 
4. If you like, you can tie a knot at the end of the string and let your toddler string the beads up. (Alicia doesn't like the knot, so she'd just string the bead then remove it from the string and ask for the next bead.)

So far this is the method that works best with the beads. Earlier I tried just using tape to stiffen the end of the yarn but it wasn't firm or long enough for the beads I had so I decided to let the toothpick take the place of the 'needle' in this activity. :) I also had to change the thickness of the string to fit the beads... hee. Lots of trial and error but at least in the end she had the joy of completing this task successfully! :P

Bought these beads at Golden Dragon at People's Park Centre

She decided that she wanted to sort the beads rather than string them together:

And she did a great job, didn't she?

Ok, here she is, stringing...