Today kicked off our first Motor Skills Monday. I was in a training all day today and will be again through Wednesday, so it will be short and sweet activities to start us off. Baby steps are good, right?
I wanted to start with a Fine Motor activity, one that I will call....hmmm...The Pom-Pom Pinch & Sort. Yes, I like that.
The Pom-Pom Pinch & Sort
I had already made this activity about a month ago and Myla really loved it so I thought we would revisit.
Materials:
Multi-colored craft pom-poms of various sizes
Egg carton
Clothespins
Sharpie
I took the egg carton and cut off the lid. Then I took a sharpie and wrote letters to stand for the different colors of the pom-poms. Like how I differentiated the 2 Ps?? :) Then on the other side I wrote the numbers 1-6. I figured we would be doing some sorting by color and practice counting.
As soon as I had set the materials out, my first kiddo hopped on up to the chair and started exploring. Such an important starting point, in my opinion, is to just give them some free exploration time.
So he just started picking up the pom-poms on his own and started dropping them in the egg carton.
Then I showed him the "alligator"...aka the clothespin. Sometimes you need to add a little familiar vocabulary to engage the littles. He loves alligators and thought he would think it would be fun to have the alligator eat the________ well, pom-poms. I wasn't clever enough to come up with what the alligator was eating but he didn't seem to mind.
It took a little while for him to figure out how to use the clothespin, but I really wanted to give him time to problem-solve before I stepped in to show him. I think after a couple minutes, he had figured it out. :)
And this would be the part where he pinched his hand. Ouch. He didn't last very long after that...
He did, however, want to climb up in my lap and "play summore". So we used our fingers this time and counted the little pom-poms and put them in the numbered sections.
Next up, was Myla's turn....
She is my high-energy, always-on-the-go child so I wanted to start our time off with something fast-paced. I had her sort the large pom-poms by color as fast as she could.
On your mark,
Get set.....
GO!!
Didn't take her long at all!
Then I asked her a few questions like "Which color has the most? the least? Which color has 4? 2? etc.
I noticed that she miscounts often as she counts too fast and counts the same multiple times when she has a bigger group. I taught her to take one at a time away from the group to count more carefully. She did well when she tried that.
Next, I told her to sort them by color into the egg carton. We went over the letters and matched them to their colors first. :)
She's a pro.
Then it was time to use the clothespin! She didn't find the "alligator" term as amusing as Noah did. She liked calling it her "pinchers". That works too, I guess...
I was surprised at how much better she did this time compared to a month ago when I first introduced it. She had such a better grasp and control. It was a breeze for her.
Here she is sorting by color.
Then it was time to work with the "babies"...AKA the mini pom-poms. We did the same and sorted by color as fast as she could. Again, I asked questions about how many were in each group etc. I had her count the groups and we put them in order from least to greatest. Didn't get a pic of that tho.
Lastly, she sorted by color and numbers using her "pinchers".
When I said that was all we were doing for tonight, her reply..."No!! I'm not done yet!" Love it. The last thing I want to do is overwhelm her so I try to keep our activities 15-20 mins tops. When she self-initiates more, that is fine with me. :)
Until next time...It's Thoughtful Tuesday tomorrow and I'm not quite sure what we are doing yet. Stay tuned to find out!!
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