Showing posts with label pincer grasp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pincer grasp. Show all posts

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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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

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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.

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

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

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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.

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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. 

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

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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.

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Letter L Object Basket

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

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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

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

Letter l sound

Pincer Grasp Activities for Tot Schoolers

Monday, 24 November 2014

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I am working on a list of fine motor skills that Vito has to practise on.  First on the list is the pincer grasp.

Vito recently turned 1 and I’m starting to introduce him to a routine of activities which include developing of fine motor activities, language (reading books and baby signs), nature exploration and more. 

Now, this post is all about his love of dropping cereals and GeoMags in a container. One of the most important fine motor skills that child should develop early on in life is their PINCER GRASP (picking up small objects using index finger and thumb).  This is a basic skill needed to be able to hold a pen, feed themselves, using scissors, manipulating small objects and more.

It started with the cereals (he eats this every morning) and I gave him an empty water bottle and demonstrated how to drop that cereal in the hole.  He was taken right away.  He started mimicking my actions. A few tries, he failed.  But I find it so amazing for this little fellow to try and try and finally succeed!

So cute, how he opens his mouth as he attempts to drop the cereal.  As you can see, I am holding the bottle at first.

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He grabbed it from me and attempts to hold the bottle in one hand and using his other hand to drop the cereal.  I was amaze that he’s able to control the movement of his hands for their individual task!  Right hand is in control of the bottle, making sure it doesn’t move so he can drop the cereal easily, and the left hand is in control of the cereal as he try to focus dropping it on that small bottle mouth.  And I have to say, good hand and eye coordination practice as well!

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See here, his hands switched roles!  And he can do the job in either hands!

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Oh and here, doing it again the next day :D

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Wow! You can’t imagine how happy I am that he was able to do that! And he was so happy as well, and kept on clapping his hands for his major achievement. He’s hooked whenever he works on this activity.

Then a few days, I tried to challenge him by giving him GeoMags.  Now this one is not as small as the cereals and they are of different shape.  It’s tricky for him as he has to position the magnetic stick to a correct orientation so he can drop it.

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Last material we used is the buttons (from Galt Fun Button).  We these buttons! They’re big enough for little hands to hold.   See in the pictures below how I need to position the tub in different orientation so he can drop it easily.  He cannot do it yet with the tub standing upright.

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I love that he pushed the buttons more!

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More tot school activities in the next few days!

Linking to:

Montessori Monday
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Teach Beside Me
Preschool Corner
Teaching Mama
I Can Teach My Child
Home + School = Afterschool!
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