I am a contributor over at ABC & 123 and I wanted to share some of my posts from there with you all in case you missed them! This post is part 1 of 2 on incorporating Fine Motor Skills into learning, and best of all it is easy and fun! So without any further ado, here are some ideas to help you change a hum drum routine into fabulous fun and work those fine motor skills at the same time! Here’s a sneak peak at the activities I included, the full links are at the bottom of this post:
We have the original Perler Beads, but this is a new variation for smaller children who can’t quite manipulate the tiny ones. You can iron your finished design just like the regular ones, and they are perfect to use as counters, color sorting, and patterns! They’re just the right size for my 4 year old, and great for fine-muscle practice! I also had her try this using tweezers to grab the beads.
Marble balancing:
This is one of our favorite activities to work on fine motor coordination. I chose to do it in the workbox because otherwise we’d have marbles rolling all over! Using a piece of Styrofoam, simply push golf tees into the foam, then balance different sized marbles on the tops!
Glass Beads:
I found this bag of gems at Michael’s. We use them for everything from color sorting, to counters for our Letter of the Week games! Balancing them on the Popsicle sticks takes great control!
Kristi: First i have to say that I laughed at your comment! We do periodically have beads flying across the room, mostly due to my Tiny Tot, not due to the other kids. My older kids ask to do the prek activities, and I'll let them do it but only AFTER they've finished their own boxes!The tiny tot….well that's another story! I do my best to keep her out of things while we work. I do supervise while everyone is doing boxes, so I try to keep her occupied or out of things. Also, if I know that there is something too difficult to keep her out of we'll save that for when she's napping. Not sure how much that helps, but konw that NO my kids aren't PERFECT LOL! Far from it, I just do my best to organize the chaos :o)
I love all your ideas!! I love fun and colorful things like that!
I picked up some gems just like the ones in your picture above and used them on the jumbo craft sticks this week. It was a fun and different way to practice fine motor skills for my children, even at 7 and 9 yrs. My older one has fine motor delays, so it was a fun task to add to our "bag of tricks"! Thanks!
I found your website googling “biggie bead blank template”. I didn’t ever find a blank template but I figured out how to make my own. Go to classbrain.com and make your own graph paper. Set the graph to print at 2.4 lines per centimeter with a 1cm inch around the border. It’s not perfect but it is VERY close. Good Luck!