Fine Motor Heart Drop

 My daughter is just a whiz at fine motor activities, but they are still fun for her to do. We like to recycle and reuse things, and my cousin had an empty Pringles can so we said we'd take it! We turned it into this Fine Motor Heart Drop.

You will need:

- Pringles canister with lid

- Pink construction paper

- craft foam heart stickers (can be purchased at Dollar Tree)

- wooden hearts of assorted colors (I'm not sure where these were from, we've had them for a long time, but I'm willing to bet you could find something similar at a craft store like Hobby Lobby. 

- scissors

- tape

So, you tape the pink construction paper around the Pringles canister to cover it, then you let your little one decorate it with the craft foam stickers. 

Cut a slit just big enough for the wooden hearts to be stuck through. 

And there you have it, your little one can fill up the canister with the wooden hearts. Having fun and honing their fine motor skills! Great thing to have the kiddos do while you are making their lunch or something, and it's especially perfect to have during this time of year when Valentine's day is coming up. 

MLK Day Equality Craft

Equality should be taught to children all throughout the year, but on MLK day it's always nice to talk about what a great man Martin Luther King Jr was and what his dream was, and work in a lesson on equality. In addition to reading some books and having a discussion, we did this craft.

It's a collage of all different kinds of kids from magazines we had. Not only are the kids of various nationalities, but we also talked about other differences people can have and got some of varying hair and eye colors as well.

Not only was this obviously a great lesson in how all people have their differences but are all equal, it was also good fine motor work. My daughter is a pro at cutting and gluing by now, but for kids just starting out with these skills it's great practice.

And the greatest part, she was so proud of it!

Color Sorting Beads

We've been doing color sorting activities for so long that this is very easy for my daughter, but it's still great for working the mind and for some quiet time and an activity she can do all on her own. She loves to sort! Her fine motor skills and color recognition skills have been great for a long time now because of activities just like this. I highly recommend this and my other fine motor activities for honing those fine motor skills.

For this color sorting activity we used beads of various colors and a mini muffin tin. All I had to say was "sort these" and she got right to work. When she was younger and first starting out with color sorting I would use fewer colors and put one of each in the spaces I wanted her to put them. You can try that if your child needs assistance. While they sort you could talk about which colors are which if they aren't sure yet.

We only had one green bead and one yellow bead in the mix. My daughter said "that pesky green bead" and it really made me laugh! Hopefully you and your kiddo have fun with this activity as well. It'd be great for a tot tray.

Josef Albers Inspired Art Squares

Firstly, I would like to make it known that I'm not taking credit for this idea. It was something my daughter got to do at our local library. I'm pretty sure it was an idea given by a book about Josef Albers art, but the librarians may have came up with it, and they put it together. I'm not really sure, but it was way too good of an idea not to share.

If you're not familiar with Josef Albers you should read up on him on the internet with your child, or see if you can rent a book about him from your local library. He used a lot of different colored squares for his art works, putting them together all different types of ways. He noticed how colors look different when placed on top of other colors.

I think this is a FANTASTIC color lesson for kids already have all their colors down. For those that don't, you can use it to teach them what colors are what too of course. But if you can really get your child thinking about how colors look on top of different colors that's so great!

You'd need to provide:
- A large sheet of white paper
- Big squares of several different colors of construction paper (enough to fill up the entire sheet of white paper, using every color just once)
- Little squares of the same colors of construction paper (the same amount as the big squares)
- A glue stick

Let them play around with it for a while until they get the design they love and connect with. Have discussions about how certain colors "pop" when placed on top of other colors, or how they "blend in." Good color terms to get kids familiar with. Once they have a design they like they can glue it down, or you can just glue down the big squares and leave the little squares paper clipped to the top to do over and over again.

Fine Motor Valentine's Cards

Valentine's day is right around the corner, and when your little one has lots of loved ones in their life it's best to get started on the Valentine card making early so in case they only want to make a few at a time there's no rush. However, when making these Valentine's cards your kiddos will probably want to go on for quite some time. I know mine did! 

These are great for fine motor skills, fun for kids (since every little one I know LOVES stickers), frugal to make a lot of, and cute cards that people will love receiving 

All you need to buy is two things from the Dollar Tree: a pack of construction paper, so you can use the red paper, and a package of different colored and sized craft foam heart stickers. Your little one will use their fine motor skills to peel the papers off the craft foam so they can stick them to their paper. They will be creative while they design the Valentine's any way they want. This is a time to praise them for their creativeness and efforts to make cards for other people. We made a list of who we needed to make cards for first so we could keep track and also because I wanted my daughter to think about who she was making each one for as she was making them.

Like I said I let my daughter get creative and design these however she wanted without intervening because they were her cards she was making for her loved ones. We do plenty of educational activities at all other times. However, if you want to work on colors, numbers, big vs small, patters, etc. you could use these hearts to do so with conversation while making them.

Here's how the ones she made turned out. I think they are so creative and beautiful. 

You can see I cut the pieces of construction paper in half as to make more cards, make our hearts go farther, and it just seemed nicer to send that size so people could put them on display easier. I also used a few pieces of pink printer paper that we had lying around in addition to the red construction paper so she could have options.

Marshmallow Transfer Tot Tray

As part of our Arctic theme this week we did this fun tot tray!

First off, how cute are those polar bear pajamas? Charlie got them as a gift from her great grandma and they are just perfect for this themed week. 

So, we got out the blue tot tray, some cool colored bowls, and some clear plastic tongs. These tongs were sold in a pack with quite a few of them. I'm not sure if they were from Dollar Tree or if I had found them somewhere else. 

I filled up one bowl with marshmallows and then instructed my daughter to transfer them to the other bowl with her tongs. This is a practical life skill that's good for fine motor. My daughter's fine motor skills are honestly so great and have been for a while now from doing these activities. I keep her doing them just because she finds them fun and I think they are educational and like I said it's a practical life task. As a reward she got to eat a few of the marshmallows!

Fine Motor Tot Tray

I'm just gonna share a super simple tot tray to do with colored rice. If you have some colored rice, just put it in a bowl and give your little one a spoon and another container to put it in. When working on fine motor skills with preschoolers the littler the spoon/opening of the container the better as they are advancing in their abilities. I really love the glass jar with tiny wooden spoon I got from Hobby Lobby. It has a little hook for the spoon and a wooden lid as well. Really good quality and wasn't very expensive.

Fine Motor Pumpkin Painting

There's many different ways to decorate a pumpkin, but have you ever considered having your kids do it in a way that would help them with their fine motor skills? I did last year, and decided to have my daughter paint a pumpkin using q-tips. This helps to prepare children for writing.

All you need is a pumpkin, a plate, some paint, and q-tips. I decided to use a tiny pumpkin for my daughter doing this. It was perfect and turned out very cute! 

Name Caterpillar Craft

This is one of my favorite crafts we've ever done. It was so educational and fun for my daughter! Not to mention all of the fine motor strengthening parts of it. We did it when she was about 18 months old. Here's what the finished product should look like.

What you'll need:

- A piece of white card stock paper

- Orange construction paper

- Green construction paper

- Scissors

- Sharpie marker

- Glue (Elmer's makes great glue pens, you could also use regular glue bottles or sticks)

First take your orange sheet of construction paper and draw a circle on it for the caterpillars head and write the first letter of your child's first name in it. Next, use the green construction paper and repeat for the rest of the letters of your child's name, with a bit smaller circles.

Next, help your child cut out the circles or let them cut them out themselves depending on where they are at with their scissor skills. At 1.5 here I was doing a lot of the cutting with my daughter, and now at 2.5 she barely needs my help at all.

After all the circles are cut out instruct your child to put glue on the backs of them all. This is great for their fine motor skill development, as was the cutting.

Last, give your child the white sheet of paper and show them how to put the circles down on the paper. Help them to put them all in the right order. During this time discuss all the letters and how they are the letters that make up their name. Sound them out individually, together, and say the name a few times. Ask them to repeat after you. Very educational!

Finding Nemo Sensory Bin (Baby Safe)

For our ocean theme we've been doing lots of fun things! We had a movie time where we watched Finding Nemo. My little cutie only watched the first 20 minutes and then asked me if we could read instead. Makes me proud! BUT she does love the Finding Nemo characters, so I put together this adorable sensory bin.

This bin is totally baby safe, provided of course you're watching your baby while they play. Nothing in it is edible, but I consider it totally appropriate for babies to play with. It's even great for honing fine motor skills!

For the base material, I actually used three different materials. They were all blue though to represent the ocean. Pom poms of different sizes/textures/shades, cut up plastic straws, and hair rollers. You probably have most of this stuff around the house, could easily obtain it for cheap, or can substitute something else for it.

Then I added toy characters from Finding Nemo that can be purchased at Dollar Tree. It's adorable and sure to delight!

Polka Dot Artwork for Fine Motor

Fine motor and art? Yes, please!

This activity incorporates both in a fun way. Making this fun work of art your toddler won't even think of it as work to hone their fine motor skills. It's fine motor, crafty fun!

All you need for this is
-a sheet of construction paper (I used black)
- craft foam shape circle stickers. You can get a pack of craft foam shape stickers here

Any shape or craft foam sticker would work since they'd be peeling the sticker and pressing it down just the same way. The theme of this artwork for us though was polka dots. Made it fun and super cute to stick to a theme.

Patriotic One to One Correspondence Activity

I set this activity up for Charlie for Memorial Day, sorry I didn't post it sooner..but you'll still be able to use it for anytime, and all the other patriotic holidays to come, like 4th of July!

I just adore activities that totally fit in with holiday or unit themes and this one did exactly that, as well as helped my daughter gain knowledge. Best of both worlds!

You'll need:
- A blue ice cube tray (preferably with star shaped sections like ours, just to be more patriotic)
- Red pom poms.

One to one correspondence is about one object fitting in one space. So for this activity, it was one pom pom fitting in one ice cube tray space. So my daughter placed each pom pom in a different star section.
This was great for fine motor skills too. Could use fingers or tweezers/tiny tongs. We had just done an activity with tiny tongs before this, so she went for her fingers.

Z is for Zebra Craft

Crafts can often be a big help when you're teaching something to a toddler or preschooler. It's a hands on way to bring the information learned to life. If your child is a visual learner crafts can be especially helpful to make a new subject or lesson click. 

For this craft, we were doing letters of the week. This is obviously a craft for the letter "Z" and I choose to make it Z is for Zebra! 

I cut out a capital letter Z from some thick white paper. I also cut out some small strips of black paper, small enough to basically fit on the letter Z. Your kiddo can help with the cutting if they'd like!

I set the Z and the strips out for my daughter, as well as some glue. I helped her make dots of glue all over the letter Z and explained that she'd put the black strips on those spots. She then did just that! Squeezing the bottle of glue, and placing the small strips of paper down on those precise spots was great for her fine motor skills.

Tower Craft Designing Your Own

This week at our house the home school theme is all things fairytale. We decided to kick off this themed week with a craft: designing your own tower. This was especially great for Charlie, seeing as she's been obsessed with Tangled lately.

You'll need:
- A sheet of paper to be the background (we used white)
- Construction paper (we used pink)
- Glue stick
- Scissors
- Stickers, regular or craft foam
- Glitter glues
- Other options could be crayons, colored pencils, gel pens, markers, tempera paints, etc.

I let Charlie pick out what color she wanted her tower to be and of course she chose pink! We had also got out some purple, thinking that maybe there'd be two colors to the tower, but she ended up sticking with pink for all of it.

Now, I asked her if she remembered what Rapunzel's tower looked like and what shape she thought the big part ought to be and she correctly said rectangle. I let her cut out the rectangle shape freehand but you may want to draw the outline of yours first. We used the glue stick to paste it down, and then talked about what shape the top part should be.

 We decided on a triangle with some curve, definitely a pointy top though. Once that shape was cut out I asked her if she wanted me to cut a window out in it, she did, so I did. We glued that on and then it was time to decorate the tower!

Charlie wanted to use some craft foam heart stickers that we had leftover from Valentine's Day. So she got to use her fine motor skills to peel the backs off the stickers and adhere them to her tower.

Next came the glitter glues. We've got some big bottles and little bottles.

 She always squirts a big glob out and then spreads it around with her finger(s) or a small piece of scrap paper. She used purple and blue on the tower. Silver on the left side of the background, light green on the right side of the background, and dark green for some grass along the bottom.


I think it turned out beautifully!

Rainbow Qtip Art

This is a fantastic craft. It serves as an opportunity for kids to paint in a way they never have before, while honing their fine motor skills when they don't even know it! It also helps to teach the rainbow, and colors. This craft can be used as a card (like ours obviously says "Welcome Back!").

All you need for this is a piece of paper, paints (preferably washable tempera) in all the colors of the rainbow, and Qtips.

Explain to your child what you'll be doing. If your child will it exactly how it's supposed to be, great! If not, here's a helpful trick. Cover the sections of paper underneath the part that's being worked on with another sheet of paper, moving it down as needed. This won't stop them from adding colors where they don't belong, but it will help. The point is to use the Qtips to make dots of each color on the page in sections that are about the same size, in the right order of course. Ours turned out beautifully!