Get Your Motors Runnin'....

And that is exactly what we did today! I'm tired already and it's only 3pm. 

So to recap, we are in Week 2 of our Summer Fun Schedule where we have an area of focus for the day. {I need a schedule during the summer, probably because I am so used to one during the school year. But I'm learning my kids, like most kids, need one too.}

 So, today, being Motor Skills Monday, I had a few things in mind. But not before our busy morning!

Myla started VBS today so Noah and I dropped her off at 9am and met my sister and nephews at the library for story time. Noah loves the library and has this new found love for books, but only if they are about trucks. Anything trucks. Diggers, dumpers, cranes, "dulldozers" or backhoes, he loves them all. I can honestly say I had never heard of a backhoe digger until Noah pointed it out to me the other day.  He can also name them all, it's crazy. So within 23 seconds, he had picked out his 2 truck books.

Once story time started (it was an all about bug theme) Noah was already getting restless. Him and his cousin were not wanting to sit and listen to the stories and sadly, Noah and I had to leave early. Maybe a truck theme would have held his interest, perhaps???

A little too rambunctious...

He kept going back and forth, hopping around.

 Yep, a big blur

Since the little guys were so rowdy, my sis and I decided to take them to the park nearby the church to release some energy...and work on some gross motor skills, of course. ;)

Pretending it was their "castle"

I think he may be slowing down a bit...

Soon, it was time to pick up the girls from VBS....they seemed to have had a good time!

I had two activities planned out for the day. One focusing on fine motor skills for Myla (can't expect my little guy to participate quite yet) and one on gross motor skills.... and it has to do with trucks! 

Winning. 

After we got home and ate lunch, the kiddos were TIRED. Mommy was too. But I was hoping to get our little activities in before we all got too comfortable...

Pretty sure this is what they would do all day, if I let them. 

{watching TV, playing on iPad}

So Myla and I moved to the table to do our first activity. 

Pinch & Spell

Another Pinterest find... I came across this activity and thought it would be a perfect way to combine letter recognition (matching), "reading" and fine motor practice.  See the original post HERE. 

Materials

Clothespins
Sharpie
Index Cards
Various stickers

I went through our arts&craft bin in a closet and searched for stickers. We had tons of Disney princess type stickers but luckily I found enough that would be good to spell out on the index cards. Then I labeled 26 clothespins with lower case letters on one side and capital letters on the other side.

The objective is that Myla would look at the letters, "read" the word with the help of the sticker and pinch the clothespins to match on the card.

She noticed that the clothespins had the "baby" letters on them.  I decided to start with the lowercase side of the clothespin since that is how I wrote them on the cards. Thinking it would be easier to match if they looked exactly the same. :)

Before I had even finished explaining, Myla grabbed her first card and clothespin and started matching. I had her slow down to look at the card first and see what letters we needed. I also wanted her to pinch and clip them on in order as we were spelling out the word. 

First one done in a snap. 

 I noticed that she would notice when she had the clothespin showing the capital letter, she would flip it over to match on her own. (yea!)

It was a little easy for her but she didn't seem to mind. 

 She had some trouble with the little "e" in the word "heart" so she went on to find the other letters she knew. When I flipped the clothespin over to see the capital "E" she realized that is what she needed. 

Trying to find her last letter! Such concentration. ;)

We decided to just do 5 cards today, I had made about 15 or so...

As an extension,  I plan to have the capital letters only showing for her to match the lowercase letters on the cards.

I like to leave the materials out for a couple days anyway as she sometimes goes back to them later on her own. If she does, she may interchange the letters anyway. We will see.

I didn't want to leave N out too long so it was time to MOVE (literally) on to our next activity focusing on MOVING our whole body.

Construction Movement

Materials

Construction Movement Cards found HERE

"little movers" aka Kids!

That's it!

I printed these cute cards out on white card stock...thinking this might be a fun activity and I wanted them to last awhile. :)

Aren't these cute?

We first read one of Noah's truck books called, Good Morning, Digger.   It mentioned most of the trucks on the cards and we noticed what each truck did.

I'm going to predict that we will be reading this book A LOT over the next week. He's a fan.

After reading, I introduced the cards and we started acting out their actions. It was pretty fun!

 STRETCH like a Crane!

It didn't take long before Myla joined the fun.

 We would take turns choosing a card then acting out the motions.

Spinning like a Cement Mixer!

 Next up...LIFT like a forklift.

DIG like a backhoe!

 I think this was "LIFT like a Forklift"?

When I chose PUSH like a bulldozer, N had the idea to go behind the toy basket to push.

Pushing together like mini bulldozers

I think this was her favorite one....SPIN like a cement mixer.

It was a great little workout as we chose the cards quickly and hopped up to act out and then back down again to draw the next card. Again, I think we will be playing this a lot too, especially if I leave the cards out. 

We did have plans to do some outdoor activities on the driveway but it has been rainy all day so we will skip it today. Honestly?? I'm tired from moving around like construction trucks. Hopefully, N is too. He is going on a 2.5 hour nap.

Winning.

Until next time!! Thanks for reading. ;)