Encouraging children to build up their fine motor skills is important. Poor fine motor skills can affect the legibility of their handwriting, which contributes to the development of their literacy / communication skills. The stronger their fine motor skills, the easier it will be for them to manipulate and control a range of materials and tools.

How to make a Black and White Collage

Materials:
black cardboard
white paper
marker / pencil
scissors
glue

1. Draw several lines from the top to the bottom of the paper. These lines could be straight or curved.

2. Cut the white paper on the marked lines.

3. Spread out the white strips across the black cardboard.

4. Glue the white strips in place.

Fine Motor Skills Promoted

This fine motor activity, creating a black and white collage, provides children with opportunities to develop their fine motor skills with the actions of gripping, holding, cutting, squeezing, patting and pasting.

Their fine motor skills are also developed as they use various tools: scissors, markers and glue sticks.

In this particular activity, they are working with different surfaces: paper and cardboard, some wet and some dry. The variety of surfaces provides further scope for developing their fine motor skills.

More Activities for Preschoolers

Three to Five: Playful Preschool is stuffed to the brim with tried, tested and loved playful learning ideas for preschoolers. There are 25+ ideas for preschoolers, ten printable resources and additional links to over 50 more activities. A great resource for parents. Download your copy here.

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The post Fine Motor Activities: Black & White Collage by Pauline appeared first on Lessons Learnt Journal.

• At 12 months – 2 years the crayon is held initially in the palm with the thumbs pointing upwards (in a dagger grasp); the child scribbles vigorously in imitation; often draws a stroke then covers it with many scribbles; and is able to imitate drawing a vertical line.
• At 2 – 3 years the crayon is often held across all fingers in their palm with thumbs pointing down (pronate grasp); the child imitates drawing a circle; and is able to copy horizontal and vertical lines.
• At 3-4 years the crayon may be held with all four fingers on the pencil shaft opposite the thumb (quadropod grasp) or just their index thumb and middle fingers in a static tripod grasp (where the movement comes from the wrist) or a dynamic tripod grasp (where the fingers move independently for optimal accuracy in writing and drawing).

So, at the 3-4 year mark, whether your child has a quadropod grasp, a static tripod grasp or a dynamic tripod grasp, he/she has gained enough control over the pencil or crayon to be able to copy circles, imitate a zig zag line and join two dots as well as draw a man with a head and one other body part. Humans are so wonderfully made, wouldn’t you agree?

I came across this game for practising drawing circles from a really great blog, but for the life of me I can’t backtrack and find the blog and post. (If you know where it’s from, please comment here so I can acknowledge them because this game is such a great idea).

Draw a circle on a piece of paper. Then draw another circle within that circle.

And another circle within that circle. Continue till you can’t draw any more circles and can only fit in a dot.

I provided some scaffolding by taking turns drawing circles with M.

Big pieces of paper and crayons make it easier.

When drawing, watch out for hunching over the paper; gripping the crayon too tightly; reverting to pronate or dagger grasp; not crossing the midline of the body but swapping hands throughout the activity.

M extended the learning experience by folding up the circle into quarters and cutting along the curved lines we had drawn. Cutting is another skill that develops as a child’s fine motor skills matures (check out our cut out snowflakes).

 M: 3 years, 9 months

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This week we’re learning about the letter [m]. We started off rainbow writing the letter [m] using our texta silk crayons.

We then moved our rainbow writing onto more unconventional mediums.

We scooped some sweetened condensed milk onto baking trays and practised writing the letter shape of [m]. It’s a tricky letter shape to learn as it involves hops, not just simple lines and circles. We’re still working on it.

N & M have never tasted sweetened condensed milk before. They were blown away.

MMMMMMM

More Milk? Yes. More. Milk.

More m’s.

Mmmmmmm

Then I gave them some melted chocolate to add to their trays.

Last but not least came the bowl of warm custard.

They delighted in mixing all three wonderfully sweet ingredients as they practised their rainbow writing of [m].

(There may have been more tasting than rainbow writing.)

Simple ideas for introducing [m]

Show children a written lower case [m]

• Model the mouth movement and sound [m]
• Visually connect the picture/word “mix” with the letter sound [m]
• Kinaesthetically simulate a mixing action. Close fist and move it in a circular action.

This post was shared in the following linky parties:

Today at Play
It’s Playtime
Kids Get Crafty
TGIF
Sunday Showcase
Play Academy
Crafty Moms Share Sharing Saturday
Link & Learn

The post [m] is for mixing the wonderfully sweet by Pauline appeared first on Lessons Learnt Journal.

 
The process of handwriting has to be almost effortless for the writer or the writing task will be too arduous. However, the written work still has to be legible, or no matter how brilliant the written work, the reader will not be able to comprehend and appreciate it. (Apparently Beethoven’s original musical manuscripts were incredibly messy, dots and scribble all over the place- but thank goodness it was still legible.)

 
My definition of good handwriting is not beautiful calligraphy. Beautiful calligraphy is beautiful calligraphy. Using ideas about handwriting, kinesthetic awareness and kinesthetic memory from Meeks, L & Easson, V (1997, p.iii) I think of good handwriting as one that is legible and fluid, “…where the physical process is so automatic to the writer that very little attention needs to be paid to the finer details of letter formation and spacing”.

 
I grew up with handwriting programs filled with dot-to-dot tracing techniques. Dot-to-dot tracing is still used in much of the digital media available today, (whether they be itouch/iphone/ipad apps or toys that teach kids how to write). The problem with dot-to-dot tracing is that it does not encourage the learner to see the writing of each letter as one complete movement. This limits kinesthetic awareness and memory over time. Good kinesthetic awareness and memory is needed for good handwriting. “Good kinesthetic awareness and memory allow a child to make smooth and automatic gross and fine motor movements in a defined space”, Meeks, L & Easson, V (1997, p.iii).

 
In providing N & M with pre-writing activities, I was keen to introduce them to rainbow writing. Rainbow writing is basically where children practise whole movements of letter writing many times over. Depending on the medium used, they may repeat the movements using different colours or just simply repeat the movements over and over again (e.g. in a tray filled with sand or salt or over sandpaper letters).

 
In our first week of rainbow writing, N & M focused on straight lines. Using activities by Meeks, L & Easson, V (1997) the pre-writing exercise encouraged them to look where they were going. Their aim was to draw a straight line from the bird to the worm (or cat to the mouse), paying particular attention to:

• Not lift their crayon/texta/pencil;
• Go quickly
• Start right on the cross (next to the bird)
• Stop right on the dot (next to the worm)

 
As this was their first rainbow writing experience, I focused on their movement. Was it continuous and smooth?

 
Window crayons were their preferred writing implement. It’s oil-pastel like texture helped them easily glide across the paper and the bold colours were irresistible. It does tend to get easily onto their hands, (possibly because they coloured in their own hands as part of the experience), but thankfully it’s easily washable.

 
In true N&M tradition, an experience is incomplete without some sort of game involved. They soon turned their attention away from straight lines to ‘hiding’ the bird and worm under a mass of crayon.

Reference List:

Meeks, L & Easson, V 1997, ‘Rainbow writing Book 1: Pre-writing and Lower Case Letters’, Ants in the Apple, Exeter, New South Wales.

 N & M: 3 years, 3 months
August 2011

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