Template Blog Test: fine motor skills

Showing posts with label fine motor skills. Show all posts

Tot School Snippets Week 1: Ice

Monday, 1 February 2016

I was reading my old blog the other day (private) and I am amazed on how I recorded Mavi’s learning curve week by week. Mavi enjoys reading that blog now! I just have to say that it is quite different when you have one child, you have focus, you have MORE time and well, I was organized. Now, I’m managing and engineering a bigger household, with a school boy and a hyperactive toddler, I barely have time to blog.

So now, I will start writing about Vito’s activities in a week. I have to put a little effort on this, for keeping memories and for Vito to read someday. Currently, we’re not following schedule of doing totschool weekly. There are days when we do a lot of activities, and there are times when I just whip anything that goes into my mind.

Vito is 26 months old.

THEME: ICE

This is still in line with Arctic Theme for the month of January. I dumped some ice in a tray, place a sea lion and polar bear from Schleich and tiny bucket.. and he had a blast!

With just ice, he learned a lot of vocabulary words:

big and small

cold

slippery

melting

hard

COLOR: Red and White

I ran out of blue so I picked red and white. Aside from painting, we also mix color to form pink.

His first color mixing activity.

LETTER OF THE WEEK: I/i

Vito knows all his letters and the sounds they make, so we’re heading towards learning small and big letters and objects . The letters used here were from Melissa and Doug. I have two sets.

This was also the time we read the Alphabet Booklet and identify the objects starting with letter i. You can refer to my post here about the baskets, and booklets on my Sellfy Shop. You can get them for free!

SHAPES: Square

Gluing cut out squares. We are using the Maped scissors for kids (2yrs +).

FINE MOTOR SKILLS:

Lining up Hot Wheels cars, learning how to use the glue spreader, cutting using a real scissor (supervised) and using our miniland abacus.

ART/CRAFTS:

Oh Vito made a big letter i.

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Crazy Over Do-a-Dot Markers and {Learn & Play Link Up}

Wednesday, 9 December 2015

I know you’ve heard about these already and have seen these markers in other homeschooler Moms. My little Vito had a renewal of interest and can’t stop using them! These dot markers are great tools in practicing hand/eye coordination and concentration. Aside from that, we also use it to learn shapes, colours and letters! Next year, we’ll start using them for counting.

Though there are plenty of FREE dot worksheets online, I prefer handwriting our own sheets to save ink. Here are some random photos of Vito using the dot markers.

For learning letters.

Marking shapes.

He keeps asking for more!

Working on letter ‘t’ again.

To save time, energy and INK, I cut out sheets of paper from the IKEA paper roll and just hand drawn everything. Then I place the sheets on one of the work trays so Vito can easily access them. He would usually work on them in the morning. Note that the markers can stain, but they can be wash off with soap AND water (with a little scrubbing). I have these markers since 2011 and they’re still good as new. Here’s the link if you are interested.

Welcome to the Learn & Play Link Party!

Here are the featured activities for this week!

13 Clocks Preschool Trays from from SmarE PartE

Montessori Sensorial Extensions from Spielgaben from Living Montessori Now

Watercolor Christmas Trees from 3 Dinosaurs

Salt Dough Holiday Ornaments from Tiny Tots Adventure

10 Christmas Montessori Inspired Tot Trays from Mama’s Happy Hive

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Now it’s time for this week’s link party! This is a BRAND new link up for all blog posts that include learn and play activities and hands-on education for kids. We are excited to read your blog posts and to see what you have to share! Please link up below and grab our button to display on your blog.

If you are a blogger, share your family friendly posts here. We are looking for things which include:

Montessori Education
Homeschool
Sensory Play
Tot and Preschool Trays
Fine and Gross Motor Activities
Kids in the Kitchen
Healthy Recipes for Kids
Arts and Crafts
Natural Living
Free Educational Printables
Family-Oriented Activities
Healthy Living

Your post will be featured on each of our blogs where we will pick our favourite posts every other week. That means there is more of a chance that you will be featured!

Everyone, please meet our link party hosts:

Christian Montessori Blog ~ Please visit our CMN FB group ~ Pinterest

Vanessa from Mama’s Happy Hive~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jennifer from Study at Home Mama~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Marie from Child Led Life~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jae from Pinay Homeschooler~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Heather from Golden Reflections Blog~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Renae from Every Star is Different~FB~Pinterest

GUIDELINES FOR LINKING

Please link up 1-3 posts
Follow each of the hosts on social media
When you link up, please add our button and place it at the bottom of your shared posts or link back with text link.
By entering a link, you’re giving us permission to feature an image on our blogs. Proper credit & links will ALWAYS be given.
Please visit a couple of shared posts and leave a comment for them
Remember that you must link back in order to be featured

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An InLinkz Link-up

FREE Safari Toob Tree Matching Cards

Thursday, 12 November 2015

Download here or click the image.

Vito uses these cards a lot in TREE ACTIVITIES and even in random days, he would pick this up from shelf and work it.

Letter L: Leaf Activities in Autumn

Tuesday, 6 October 2015

We are joining the bandwagon of autumn-themed activities and for Vito, we’re having leaf activities!

Leaf Color Matching

Got these beautiful craft leaves from a local store and used it for sorting colors. I just dumped them in a container and would take each one, then mention the color and place it to where it belongs. Vito loves calling out their names! I am not sure if he could recognize colors yet, it’s a hit or miss for him. It’s a challenge to put up a color sorting activity for him so I put on extra effort on making it fun like making noises or funny sounds as I drop the leaf to the sorted group.

We also tried putting them in bowls. Again, this is another try for him to get him interested. To put twist, we try to shoot the leaves into the bowls.

He loves to shoot the them, which got him hooked as he enjoyed it tremendously!

Leaf Shapes

So I got a book My First Montessori book of Leaf Shapes from Amazon and used it to identify the shapes of the leaves we picked during our nature walk. The book is actually for Mavi but Vito enjoyed viewing it as well. Mavi and I talked about the organic shapes in the past few years, of how different they are from the geometric shapes that he knew. The book is perfect for exploring other organic shapes if you are not really familiar with it. This was inspired by Kylie’s post.

This was Mavi’s idea of creating a gallery of leaves in the hallway. Because it mostly rain in our area, this was a brilliant idea of preserving the leaves we collected and view them whenever we can.

I love seeing them working together Smile This technique works best for us, Vito always wanted to do what his brother is doing, so I have to create activities that both them can enjoy.

Once they are dry, I put them on the wall for Vito to view and touch.

Counting Leaves

If Mavi loves letters at young age, Vito is into numbers and counting. He counts and counts all the time! So this activity of counting leaves was a total hit! Not to mention the biting of the number foam Open-mouthed smile

Leaf Prints

Playdough activities are always a favourite in the house. I encourage him to press, and press harder so we can make prints. So far, he’s just using his pointer finger even if I would demonstrate to use his palm.

And he loves to peel off the leaf from the dough, perfect pincer grasp activity!

Upon seeing the prints, he said “wow!”. Glad that he’s able to appreciate the effect of his actions LOL.

Letter L Craft

This has got to be a weekly activity, of making simple letter craft that we can post on the wall for letter recognition. We’re using uppercase letters as of the moment. I’m not putting so much effort on the alphabets as of the moment as he’s quite not interested yet. Maybe in a few months, he’ll be able to pick up on letters as I will continuously expose him to them, especially introducing upper and lowercase letters.

Autumn Colors

Another shared activity for the two. I traced Vito’s hand and asked Mavi to paint me a tree (with Vito’s hand as a trunk/branches) with autumn colors.

As I mentioned, Vito ALWAYS ALWAYS wanted to imitate his brother.

Mavi picked yellow, red and orange and used the dabbing technique as it makes it look more like leaves. Please forgive the appearance of my not so beautiful toes and slippers LOL.

Letter L Object Basket

Objects in the basket: sandpaper letter homemade, letter L from Munchkins, leaves, lemon and lion

And this is what he does with the leaves! So unfortunate the weather was pretty bad, we couldn’t do it outdoors with the real ones. Crossing fingers for Mr Sun in the next few days before winter arrives Open-mouthed smile

Thank you for taking time to read this post! Don’t forget to pin this for later!

Ultimate Collection of Practical Life Activities (Part Two)

Thursday, 30 July 2015

I’m sharing another set of practical life activities that we do at home! If you enjoyed the first part of my post, well, here are more exciting stuff to do with you kids.

“Practical life or real work activities, along with the development of language, may well be the most important work in the first six years of life. By means of these activities the child learns to make intelligent choices, to become physically and mentally independent and responsible. He learns to concentrate, to control muscles, to act with care, to focus, to analyse logical steps, and complete a cycle of activity. This lays the groundwork for sound mental and physical work throughout life.” – Susan Mayclin Stephenson, CHILD OF THE WORLD

	Assembling a Torch Materials: - torch - set of batteries Essential in practicing the small muscles in the hand. Develop concentration, motor skills, hand-eye coordination.
	Puzzles with small holder Materials: - bowls - rice - tablespoon Essential in practicing the small muscles in the hand. Develop concentration, motor skills, hand-eye coordination.
	Pumping soap Materials: - liquid soap in pump - bowl - hand towel Essential in practicing the hand and arm muscles. Developing motor skills as well.
	Pouring to multiple containers Materials: - water in a small pitcher - multiple cups For hand - eye coordination, concentration and motor skills.
	Pouring Materials: - rice or beans - containers Develop hand -eye coordination, dexterity and concentration.
	Pouring Rice using a Funnel Materials: - rice or beans - containers - funnel Develop hand -eye coordination, dexterity and concentration.
	Pouring Liquid using a Funnel Material: - water in a small pitcher - funnel - separate container for the funnel Develop fine motor skills, concentration, eye and hand coordination.
	Pouring Medicine Syrup Material: - medicine syrup - teaspoon To develop eye-hand coordination, arm muscles, concentration and motor skills.
	Pouring Back and Forth Materials: - water - two containers Develop hand-eye coordination and concentration when transferring water from one container to another.
	Sorting Colors Materials: - counters or buttons in different colors - sorting tray Enhance the skill of color recognition.
	Sorting Shapes Materials: - counters or buttons in different shapes - sorting tray Enhance the skill of shape recognition.
	Hammering Materials: - we used Tap Tap Art Develop motor skills, hand-eye coordination, concentration. Improve hand and arm muscles as well.
	Playdough Materials: - playdough - playdough/cookie cutters, moulders, rollers Practise of hand muscles. Develop skill of concentration,motor skills, artistry and imagination.
	Scooping Pasta using Different Scoop Sizes Material: - containers - pasta - set of scoops in different sizes Hand-eye coordination, concentration and motor skills.
	Clamping Objects Material: - packing beans (or something similar) - clamp - containers or cups Practise of hand muscles, hand-eye coordination, concentration.
	Use of Knife Material: - chopping board - knife - vegetables or fruits Practise of hand muscles, concentration, hand-eye coordination and motor skills.
	Large Puzzles with holders Materials: - we are using Melissa & Doug Jumbo Puzzles Enhance the skill of grasping objects of various sizes and hardness. To improve thumb stability, which is essential in holding things and drawing.
	Lacing Shoes Materials: - shoes or something similar Develop hand-eye coordination, hand muscles and concentration.
	Pegboards Materials: - we are using FantaColor Enhance the skill of grasping objects of small sizes. Practise of hand muscle, hand-eye coordination and motor skills.
	Scooping Floating Objects Material: - water in a bowl or container - floating materials like golf balls or Styrofoam balls - scoop or small strainer Hand-eye coordination and concentration.
	Paper Clips Materials: - coin slot - buttons or coins Develop hand-eye coordination, concentration and motor skills.
	Tying Sticks Materials : - sticks - ribbons To develop the skills of using both hands in a controlled and organized manner.
	Dropping sticks in a hole Material: - container with a hole - sticks or something similar Develop hand-eye coordination, and in hand manipulation.
	Washing Toys Materials: - toy figures - brush, water, towel Develop skills that are essential for personal care and care for others. Develop motor skills, hand-eye coordination and concentration.

Don’t forget to check the first part of this post for more ideas.