skills and values

7 Fun Ways to Build Fine Motor Skills

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We know how important it is for children to build their fine motor skills. Here are 8 fun ideas for activities that can help them to develop these skills.

  1. Play-dough

Play-dough has been a childhood favorite for decades. Not only is it downright fun, but handling play-dough also develops some important skills. Squeezing and stretching it helps strengthen finger muscles, and touching it is a valuable sensory experience.

  1. Finger painting

Using finger paint can strengthen your child’s hand-eye coordination and manual dexterity. All you need is an easel or a thick piece of paper, some finger paints and a space—like the yard or garage—where your child can get messy.

  1. Squeeze out a sponge

Set up two separate bowls, one filled with water and the other empty. Give your child a sponge and have her soak it in one bowl. Then have her squeeze the water out of the sponge into the other bowl. She can transfer water back and forth between bowls, too. This simple game can strengthen hands and forearms. It’s especially fun if you throw in some bubbles or some food dye

  1. Color with broken crayons.

Difficulties with fine motor skills can make it tough to grip a pencil. Coloring with small, broken crayons encourages your child to hold the crayon correctly—between her thumb and forefinger. Small pieces of chalk and the pencils used on mini-golf courses work well, too. No matter what you use, this activity a fun way to challenge your child.

  1. Make paper dolls.

Paper dolls have been around for generations, and kids still love them. By cutting and folding tabs, your child can strengthen important hand muscles. Start by cutting out larger dolls and outfits, and move to smaller pieces over time. Paper dolls can appeal to boys as well as girls—just look for characters that interest your child.

  1. Play string games.

Another low-tech activity that can provide hours of fun is string games. String games help improve finger strength and hand-eye coordination. All you need is some yarn and a little time to teach your child.

  1. Make macaroni necklaces.

Stringing together necklaces is a great way for your child to be creative while working on her hand-eye coordination and developing her ability to manipulate objects. To start, give her thick string and big beads or large pieces of dry pasta. Over time, she can work on more complex designs using smaller pieces.

Adapted from www.understood.org

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Importance of Fine Motor Development

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Children’s Developmental Milestones & Fine Motor Skills

In some of our classes, we introduced the skills of handling, rolling and cutting dough. It is certainly no easy task for our 3-5 years old, as their fine motor skills are still being developed.

Fine motor movements involve the coordination of small muscles in the hands and fingers. Strong fine motor skills are essential to complete tasks such as writing, cutting, using a fork or spoon, threading beads, moving puzzle pieces, zipping, buttoning, and tying shoe laces. Without well-developed fine motor skills, a child may have difficulty learning to write or performing many of the other critical tasks presented in the preschool and kindergarten classrooms.

Thought it will be interesting to share on the milestones for the 3-5 years old, which was adapted from this website.

Between the ages of 3-4 years, your child will:

  • Build a tower of 9-10 small blocks
  • Use playdough to make balls, snakes, cookies, etc.
  • Build things with large linking blocks, such as Megablocks or Duplo
  • Draw a circle by herself
  • Copy a cross (+)
  • Imitate you drawing a square
  • Start to hold a crayon or pencil with a mature grasp (like an adult)
  • Cut across a piece of paper
  • Start to cut along a straight line
  • Manage buttons
  • Put on most items of clothing by herself, but may still need help with shirts and jackets
  • Feed himself well with a spoon and fork

Between the ages of 4-5 years, your child will:

  • Start to use one hand consistently for fine motor tasks
  • Cut along a straight line with scissors
  • Start to cut along a curved line, like a circle
  • Draw a cross by herself (+)
  • Copy a square
  • Begin to draw diagonal lines, like in a triangle
  • Start to colour inside the lines of a picture
  • Start to draw pictures that are recognizable
  • Build things with smaller linking blocks, such as Duplo or Lego
  • Put on his own clothing, but may still need help with fasteners like buttons/zippers
  • Start to spread butter or cut soft foods with a small table knife (with supervision)
  • Start to learn to print some capital letters

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Rolling, cutting, colouring and playing with dough!

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Rolling, cutting, colouring and playing with dough!

We successfully conducted 2 sugar cookies classes over the weekend, and it was a joy watching the happy faces of the little chefs eating their own creation.

This was not an easy class, particularly for the younger kids, as their fine motor skills are still being developed, plus the lack of such practice at home. Therefore, parents’ involvement became extremely crucial for this class, as the parents will have to guide their child in the rolling and cutting process. We are very proud of the parents who are willing to sacrifice speed and progress, to give their child the maximum exposure in creating their own cookies, instead of doing it on their behalf.

 

When we developed this class, we knew that there is probably insufficient time to teach the kids about measurement, hence, the dedicated focus on rolling and cutting. We also make the lessons age appropriate, by only introducing the technique to make rainbow cookies for older kids.

 

This strategy certainly works, as we see that our under 5 years old enjoying the cutting of the dough into different shapes the most. In contrast, the older kids were most wowed when the technique of mixing colours into their dough was introduced, as it allows them to use their colours knowledge to blend a colour of their choice. This is a good illustration of what age-appropriate activities can do to instill interests in children!

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What children can learn from the Mouse who wants a cookie!

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Little Cookhouse conducted our very first class requiring our 3-5 years old to measure out the ingredients. It was a very good learning experience for us, as we need to work with a lot of ambiguity.

  1. Ambiguity in precision, given that the quantity required for ingredients are typically given in grams. In order to make it manageable for kids so young, we converted it into spoons and cups size. Sound simple? Actually not so, because a cup of liquid is different from a cup of flour or a cup of butter!
  2. Ambiguity in measurements, given that the recipe is now based on tablespoons, and a child may not scoop a full tablespoon as required in our measurement. The consequence, is a cookie that may not turn out to be a cookie….

Fortunately, our little chefs manage it well (with assistance from Teacher and parents of course!), and produced cookies which tasted great, even though there were slight differences in colours, size and even the sweetness.

This, as we explained to parents, is what makes baking a learning process. We can teach children the importance of measurement, that by adding more or less of something, their output may differ. Your ultimate goal is not the creation of restaurant-quality food, but boosting your child’s self-esteem and encouraging independence. More importantly, it’s about having a happy kid who’s excited to spend time working on something and doing it well!

Baking is also about providing early exposure to the child, in terms of measurement, scooping, sieving, which all helps in their numeracy and fine motor skills development. It also presents opportunities to talk about culture, nutrition and values. For instance, parents can continue to engage the child after the class, by discussing about the values from the story ‘If you give a mouse a cookie’.

Parents can ask leading questions like “Will you give the mouse a cookie?”, “Why did you do so?”, “Do you think the mouse is being greedy?”, “Do you think the boy was very kind and helpful, and such an act is something you can also learn from?” etc.

Again, it’s not about arriving at a factually correct answer, but about stimulating the thinking of your little one!

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If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

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You probably didn’t know that this book was written in 1985, and is today considered a contemporary classic!

It is so well-received, that Charles Schulz (yes, the Peanuts strips creator!) created 2 strips about it! The series has fans of all ages from all over the world including Japan, where an entire Tokyo city bus was painted with images of Mouse, and First Lady Michelle Obama read the book on the White House lawn during the 2009 Easter Egg Roll! How cool is that!

Author Laura Numeroff has often said in interviews that the idea for the story came to her during a car trip she took with a friend from San Francisco to Oregon. She narrated it as they drove and later wrote it down. The manuscript was passed over by nine publishers before being taken on finally.

The text was interpreted by illustrator Felicia Bond to show the increasing energy of the mouse, with the little boy being run ragged by the end of the story. Bond describes rushing to get the sketches done before leaving town with her boyfriend and that the energy of the mouse evolved from that excitement. She has mentioned on numerous occasions that the little boy in the book was her boyfriend, Stephen Roxburgh, as a child.

If_you_give_a_mouse_a_cookieWhat is the moral of the story? Here are 2 which I learned about.

Firstly, it is that one should possess empathy, respect, and basic manners. Even though the mouse asks for so many things from the boy, he just does it because he does it out of the goodness of his heart. This is a value we need to teach our children.

Secondly, it is how even a seemingly simple task may end up being more complicated than you originally thought, which teaches the importance of setting limits, even on a good deed. This is a lesson parents need to learn, and apply firmly so that our child can learn.

So, should we give a mouse a cookie? Yes, I think we should, but we should also teach the Mouse how to make the cookies so that he will have countless cookies to eat in future!

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