Category Archives: Fine Motor Skills

Feb7

Melty Beads Bag Tags

Posted on February 7, 2014 by TodayWeDid

When L was a preschooler her teacher noticed that while she was advanced in many areas, her fine motor skills could use some improvement. The school gave me some ideas for things to practice with her to improve her fine motor skills to help improve her writing. One of their suggestions was melty beads, which I found under the brand name Hama Beads in Lincraft. These are little plastic ring-like beads that are placed on a peg board in the desired design and then the top is ironed to melt the beads together (with baking paper between the beads and the iron face to prevent the beads melting onto the iron!). Then once the beads cool down, the design can be removed from the peg board and displayed or used in whatever way one wishes. These melty beads were a huge hit with L. We have done many designs over the past couple of years, and it never seems to lose its appeal. Now A is also very interested in making designs with the melty beads.

L adding beads to her star peg board.

Yesterday we used our melty beads to make some bag tags. A chose to make her bag tag in a heart shape, while L picked to use the star peg board. There are many different shaped peg boards available, and we only have a small selection. There are also lots of different coloured beads, which can be purchased as individual colours, or in various mixed packs. I have always bought sets of mixed beads for variety, and L and A mostly like to place the coloured beads randomly onto their chosen shape.

A placing beads on her peg board.

As predicted, A made her two hearts in a completely random way, though L made some patterns on her stars. I wielded the iron as it is too dangerous for the kids to touch.

A’s hearts.

L’s stars.

I used a hot glue gun to attach a piece of ribbon to the back of one of the shapes to form a loop from which the tag could be hung. Continuing with the glue gun, I stuck the second shape back-to-back with the first shape, so that the ribbon was sandwiched between them. A’s two hearts went together nicely, and L asked to have her stars placed so that the points of one were between the points of the other. She thought this looked cool. The glue doesn’t take long to dry, so shortly after finishing the kids could attach their new tags to their bags.

We didn’t write their names on these tags, but they do help the kids to identify their own bag at school.

New bag tag hanging on A’s backpack.

L’s new bag tag hanging from the handle of her backpack.

Feb2

Spray Bottle Painting

Posted on February 2, 2014 by TodayWeDid

Standard

A few cheap spray bottles and some watered down paint made for a wonderful evening of painting in our yard.

I hung paper from the clothesline for this activity. It took the kids a little while to learn not to spray when the wind was blowing towards them, but eventually they got more paint on the paper than on themselves! They were wearing their art smocks, but they definitely required a bath after this.

A spraying her paper.

I had a little trouble getting the right consistency for the paint, at first some of it was too watery, and we could barely see the colour on the paper, then one of them was so thick, it wouldn’t suck up the tube. After a bit of trial and error, we got three spray bottles working just right. We also found that the darker paint colours, such as blue and green worked much better than when we tried lighter colours like yellow and orange.

Using the mist setting.

A stood on a chair to be more level with the paper hanging from the line. L was at a good height, and got started right away. First they tried using their spray bottles on the mist setting. It created some great spray patterns, though L and A both wanted to add so much paint that it began just rolling down off the paper. Squeezing the spray bottle handle to spray the paint gave their hand muscles a little workout, but them didn’t seem to mind. A sometimes used both hands to spray and steady the bottle. Accurate aiming took some practice for both of them too.

Using the jet setting on the spray bottle.

They also tried using the jet setting on the spray bottles, which sprayed the paint quite a long way. They loved the noise it made when the paint hit the paper, but they also missed the paper a number of times. Once they hit Big L in the back while he was across the yard tending the garden, but most of the missed paint sprayed onto the clothesline. After the paintings were dry and I’d removed them from the line, I hosed as much of the paint off as I could. Most of the paint came off that way, the rest just adds character to our clothesline 🙂

Jet setting spray bottle paintings.

Mist setting spray bottle paintings.

Jan22

Play Foam

Posted on January 22, 2014 by TodayWeDid

Standard

A received some play foam for Christmas. It looks like tiny coloured balls of foam, and is a little sticky. They had some of this at her playschool last year, and the kids all loved it. It had said something on the pack like, it never dries out, and doesn’t stick to floors, carpets and clothing, so it is an easy clean up. I know from playschool that if it falls on the ground outside, it is near impossible to remove the dirt, grass and leaves from it, and if you happen to tread on some and don’t notice straight away, it is very difficult to remove from the bottom of your shoe. With this in mind, I placed a muck mat down, and then put the play foam into one of our play tubs, just in case.

The play foam came in a pack that was sectioned into different colours. It did not stay in separate colours for very long though. A immediately started squishing it through her fingers, and mixing the colours, so soon it was rainbow play foam.

Squashing the colours together.

More squishing.

Making cupcakes.

She likes to roll it into little balls and sausages, and mould it into various shapes, but what she likes best is to squash it! She also used some muffin cases and made pretend cupcakes with some plastic straws for candles. She shared the pretend cakes out, and we had a little tea party. Then she asked me to help her roll all of the play foam into a big ball. Once we’d done that she put some straws into the ball, and told me she was making a hedgehog.

The big ball becoming a hedgehog.

It was a pretty easy clean up, with any stray bits of foam being picked up with the big ball, and it didn’t stick to anything other than itself. I did take precautions though, and warned A not to move it off the muck mat.

A’s hedgehog ready for bed.

I enjoyed playing with the play foam as well, I like the feel of it, and so did L. It is easy to mould into shape, and holds its shape well. It should keep for a long time for future play, so long as we look after it, and don’t let it get too dirty or fluffy.

Jan22

Starry Stars

Posted on January 22, 2014 by TodayWeDid

Standard

The kids really like stars. I think their two favourite shapes at the moment are stars and love hearts. L, in particular, is going through a stage of drawing love hearts and stars on everything. So a simple post-dinner activity was placing star stickers onto a cardboard star.

I drew the stars on a sheet of cardboard and cut them out, then I let the kids loose with two star shapes each, and several sheets of star stickers. A placed random stars all over hers, while L used the stars to make patterns, and even a face on one cardboard star. She also layered some of the stickers to make some stars with lots of points.

A placing star stickers.

One of L’s multi-stickered stars.

Once they were finished placing stickers, we taped some thick pink paper strips to the top of the stars to hang them by.

You may also like Sticker Names and Sticker Counting.

Jan9

Box Construction City

Posted on January 9, 2014 by TodayWeDid

Standard

Over the last few months we have been collecting cardboard boxes instead of recycling them straight away. There were also a number of box construction items that had come home from school, and were added to the pile for re-purposing. The pile of boxes grew and grew, until it was taking up plenty of valuable decking real estate. There were a lot of cardboard boxes, of all shapes and sizes, from jelly crystal and bikkie boxes, through to nappy and big packing or freight boxes.

And what would we do with so many boxes? Well, the answer to that is Boxtown! The end of our deck was transformed into a city this morning by L, A, Big L and myself. Baby T wanted to help, but it was nap time, so he flew off to dreamworld while the rest of us got our builders’ hats on.

Building the library.

The first large building to be built was a library (I think this must be a reflection of how much we like to read!). L made a lovely sign for the top of it, and both kids helped me tape the boxes together. A tried to attach a thin cracker box as a walkway to another building, but she never made the other building to attach it to, so it just stuck out at the side of the library. Well, at least it did until it fell off, and A didn’t notice, so I didn’t mention it.

Hospital with chopper on the heli-pad.

There was also a hospital, complete with heli-pad and helicopter. The helicopter even had a red cross on its side and rotors that could spin. Besides the hospital was an airport and runway made out of painters tape. L made some planes out of cardboard rolls to live at the airport.

Airport and runway.

There were other small buildings too, including a dental clinic made from toothpaste boxes, a restaurant made from a yoghurt container, and a doctor’s surgery made from bandaid boxes. These were chosen and made entirely by L, who sorted through the boxes until she found the appropriate ones 🙂

Office tower.

The biggest building in Boxtown was the office block. Big L helped the kids make it so big, it actually stood taller than L. It was a large skyscraper towering over the rest of Boxtown. A used markers to draw some windows and doors, and make it “pretty”, while L made a sign for it. She wrote the word ‘work’ all over the sign so we had no doubt what was supposed to occur inside the office block, though she made no suggestion as to what work her workers would be performing.

There were also a few houses. A decorated a shoe box, giving it some chimneys and windows, which I think was a house. L made a large dog house too.

This was several hours of building fun, and then some more fun playing in the city. And once the kids have finished playing with Boxtown we will recycle it and reclaim our deck 🙂

Dec9

Foam Decorations

Posted on December 9, 2013 by TodayWeDid

Standard

Some 3D foam balls, sequins, seed beads, metal pins, paint and Christmas ribbon…. all the ingredients for some great bauble making craft.

My sequined ball…it did take patience to make, but it looks great.

I started making a bauble by placing a seed bead onto one of the pins, followed by a sequin, and then pushing the pin into the foam ball. I did this over and over to cover the ball. This was a bit too tricky for A to do, first she couldn’t get the seed bead onto the pin, then she dropped the sequin and the pin, and got a little frustrated with the whole project.

A’s ribbon bauble.

So we tried for something a little simpler. For her first bauble we used three different Christmas ribbons, and wrapped them around the foam ball. I held the ribbon still while A secured each one with some of the pins. We continued to do this until the ball was covered in ribbons. I then tied a piece of thin silver thread to one of the pin heads (and glued it down)to hang it by. I think the result is quite nice, and it was much quicker and easier than the bauble I made with the sequins!

L working on her sequined bauble.

L also had a go at putting sequins and seed beads on a foam ball. She decided to place her pins randomly over the ball, rather than cover the whole thing because that would take too much time! As it was, she became tired of trying to get the tiny seed beads onto the pins after about a dozen or so. She wants to come back to hers later.

To make some more decorations, A painted another foam ball and a foam star with gold paint. Once the paint was dry she glued sequins randomly over the shapes. We added some Christmas ribbon to hang them up. These were much easier for her to complete on her own, and she was happy with the result.

A’s painted star. The other side was red with sequins.

A’s painted ball with some sequins.

The kids loved hanging their own decorations up on the tree.

Nov2

Threading Wall Decoration

Posted on November 2, 2013 by TodayWeDid

Standard

Threading a patty-pan case.

Today we gathered together some dry pasta, cut-up straws, patty pan cases in two sizes, cotton balls and some string and set to work making a wall decoration for A’s room. I had some large plastic needles that A could safely use to thread her items onto the string. A cut quite a long piece of string so that it would stretch across her wall. I tied it off at the end so that the threaded items wouldn’t fall off the end, and then she got started. She used the point of the needle to push through the patty-pan cases and the cotton wool balls. The latter were reasonably hard to get the needle through, and she required some help with this, but she liked the way they looked once they were on the string.

She found that the straw pieces disappeared into the pasta if they were put together, so they were best separated by the patty-pan cases or the cotton wool. She had fun counting the straw pieces and pasta as she threaded them on too.

Once she was finished, I tied the string off, and we hung it up in her room. It was too heavy for blu-tack alone, so we tied one end to the curtain rod, and the opposite end to a hook that was already on the wall, with the centre section held up with bits of blu-tack at various intervals to give it a scalloped look. It brightened up her wall, and she had fun making it.

Oct29

Dinosaur Dig

Posted on October 29, 2013 by TodayWeDid

Standard

Sporting some stylish eye protection.

Another of our purchases from Lincraft was a Dinosaur Dig Kit, including a sand block containing a dinosaur skeleton, some goggles, and some tools for excavating the bones. L loves dinosaurs, and she was super excited to get into a dig. Big L set her up at the table after A was in bed. He placed the block on a wooden board to minimise the mess. L donned the goggles, and got to work. She worked patiently and carefully, concentrating hard on her excavation. Using the mallet and peg, she dislodged some of the block to reveal a small section of bone. She was able to use the paintbrush to remove some of the dust from the protruding bones carefully.

Using the mallet.

The dig site shut when it was time for L to go to bed, and re-opened the following night. It took four or five nights for her to completely uncover the skeleton, which was in pieces.

Using the paintbrush to clean off the bones.

She soaked the pieces in some water to loosen any sand that was left. She utilised a toothpick to clean out some of the grooves and holes on the skeleton. Once all the pieces were clean and dry, she assembled the skeleton to make her dinosaur.

Soaking the bones.

Using a toothpick to scrape out some sand.

L really enjoyed the whole process of the dinosaur dig, and she definitely wants to try another one.

A girl happy with her dino.

Oct26

Sticky Mosaics Tiara

Posted on October 26, 2013 by TodayWeDid

Standard

One of our purchases at the new Lincraft Store was a sticky mosaics kit to make a tiara. Sticky mosaics are a bit like paint by numbers, but using foam stickers instead of paint. Just peel the sticker off and place it on the corresponding number and you’re away. There is also a sticky mosaics range for younger kids, which uses shapes instead of numbers and the foam pieces are bigger. We’ve had a number of sticky mosaics and both L and A love them. They are easy and fun, and they help with number/shape recognition, using a key, and fine motor skills.

Placing the stickers onto the tiara.

A chose this tiara as she loves playing princesses and wearing sparkly crowns. Though she has done several of the shape sticky mosaics, this was her first attempt at a number one. She did really well with it, and easily followed the numbers. She also managed the smaller pieces very well. She was very pleased with the finished product!

Finished tiara.

Oct12

Marshmallow Sculptures

Posted on October 12, 2013 by TodayWeDid

Standard

Marshmallow and straw building.

We practiced our architectural skills using marshmallows, plastic straws and toothpicks. It was lots of fun, and the kids loved eating the marshmallows once they were finished 🙂

Marshmallow and toothpick house.

L discovered that the toothpicks worked better than the straws, as they were shorter and stronger. She also found that using triangles as her base shape created a stronger structure that could be built up much taller than those made with squares.

After the tower building was complete, both L and A made some original sculptures using the marshmallows. I particularly liked L’s ‘Cat doing splits’.