fine motor
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Fall Leaf Mosaics
It’s been a strange fall season so far – it hasn’t felt much like fall weather-wise, but I’m still yearning for all of the coziness and autumn colors. I’ve got a perfect fall preschool art project for you today! These mosaics require multiple steps (which mean that they can be on your lesson plans for a few days) and they target fine motor skills, sorting and categorizing, planning and execution, and artistic expression. To create beautiful leaf mosaics your class will first need to collect leaves in a wide variety of colors. This can be done on your program’s playground, on a walk in the neighborhood, a field trip to…
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Autumn Scribble Art
If you’re looking for an easy, low prep, and super powerful art experience this post is for you! Scribble art is developmentally appropriate for every age and can be done with materials that you already have. To make this really fit the fall season I stuck with traditional autumn colors, but it can be done with any color scheme which makes it an experience that you can revisit multiple times throughout the year with very different results each time. You’ll need paper, black markers or crayons, and colored markers or crayons. You can choose to have each child create their own art or use a larger sheet of paper for…
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Fine Motor Activities With Apples
You can’t escape the apple theme this time of year, and for good reason! Apples are a wonderful way to explore the science behind plant life and nutrition, but they can also be a great way to exercise some fine motor skills. Here are some of my favorite ways to use apples: Use a rotating apple peeler (like this one – affiliate link) to encourage wrist movement. It’ll fascinate the children and make quick work of slicing all of those apples so that you can taste them or bake with them. Of course, it does have a sharp blade, so this is a one-on-one activity that should only be done…
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Fine Motor Orange Pomanders
Have you ever made orange pomanders? I remember making these in preschool, but I haven’t seen them around much recently. I always love to refresh some of the activities that left an impression on me personally, so it seems like this one might be a keeper. They are very easy to make, you just need some oranges (any kind will work – even little clementines), whole cloves, something to poke holes with (a toothpick, push pin, screw, etc.), and some twine or ribbon. Start by showing the children how to poke starter holes into the skin of the orange. Once the starter holes have been made it is easy to…
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Activities to do with yarn – Fine Motor
If there is one thing that is universal for every single preschool program it’s that you never seem to have enough materials for all of the activities that you want to do with the children. Over the years I’ve gotten pretty good at creating fun experiences with very few supplies. I thought it would be fun to focus on one simple supply and share a ton of easy activities that you can do to meet different learning domains. This week is going to be all about things you can do with yarn. Yarn is the perfect material for practicing fine motor skills because you can use it to string a…
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Easter Fine Motor Activities
There are so many Easter-themed activities out there, I’m sure that just a quick Pinterest search would fill your lesson plan for the next two weeks. Unfortunately, to find the great ideas you generally have to sift through all of the duds, and the ads. So this week I’m going to do the work for you, I’ll be rounding up all of the best Easter activities so that you’ve got them all in one place! Today is all about fine motor activities, and Easter lends itself perfectly to fine motor practice, especially when you think about working with tiny little jelly beans and manipulating those wire egg-dippers! Here are some…
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Fun Fine Motor Products
My favorite thing about fine motor activities is how simple they are to set up. Just a few easy materials can make for a great learning experience. Some of the best fine motor materials are things that you already have around the house – clothespins, tongs, spoons, shoelaces, and rubber bands. All of these can be used to encourage a variety of fine motor skills, but it’s still fun to add specialized products every once and a while. Here are some fun fine motor products that your kiddos would love (all links are affiliates). Hand tongs! BBQ Grill game Nuts and Bolts building set Trail mix stringing set Pop Beads…
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Weaving activity
Did you have one of these as a kid?! I did and I absolutely loved it! I introduced it to my preschoolers a while back and they were surprisingly good at weaving the loops back and forth. We’ve done weaving before, in fact for a while we had a large loom like this one from Melissa and Doug. After a while, the big loom wasn’t enough of a challenge any more. So when I spotted the smaller ones I thought I’d give it a shot. I honestly thought it would be a disaster, so I purposely picked a day when I didn’t have very many students so that I would be…
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DIY Geoboards
Geoboards are one of those amazingly simple things that can keep children occupied for an extraordinary amount of time. They inspire exploration of geometric shapes, as well as persistence and fine motor practice. Geoboards are also easy to make yourself, so with a few simple supplies you can add a couple of these to your classroom. Here are a few DIY geoboards that I rounded up, choose whichever works best for your budget and your students! A board and nails (and a tutorial) from Little Bins for Little Hands Cork board and push pins – from An Every Day Story A CD case and clear screw fasteners – from Left…
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Stringing practice
Stringing takes some serious fine motor skills, not to mention coordination. Have you ever stopped to watch a child who is just learning how to string struggle to get both of their hands to do different functions at the same time – it’s one of those things that we take for granted as adults, but it is really really hard to learn, and it’s not easy to explain the process to a child because we don’t have to think about doing it ourselves. Stringing is a simple activity that is easy to prep, but it helps to change up the materials so that it always seems new and interesting. Here…
