Find the Animals

I have seen this idea circulating around Instagram for a while and we recently tried this activity. Take a puzzle apart and wrap aluminum foil around each puzzle piece for your child (ren) to unwrap. This is an easy way to work on those fine motor skills!

I chose an animal puzzle for this activity, but it could easily be done with any puzzle. My little ones love unwrapping a puzzle piece and discovering which animal was "hiding".

DIY Fine Motor Board

If your children are anything like mine, you most likely have pouches of some sort around your house. My kiddos like yogurt pouches and applesauce pouches. I kept wondering what I could do with those pouch lids to work on fine motor skills and I decided to create a fine motor board!

Materials:

  • Cardboard (thanks Amazon!)
  • Various pouch lids
Creating this was SO easy. All I did was cut out the piece of the pouch that the lid screw onto and then cut a slit in the cardboard. I inserted the piece into it and tightened the lid onto it. Voila! 



Drawing Lines

One skill we've been working on is drawing lines. Our occupational therapist gave us a great suggestion that I thought I'd share here since it's been helpful to us. Use dot stickers as beginning and ending points. I always encourage starting on the left so we can work on left to right progression.

You could use this trick to work on diagonal lines as well. We also use chalk outside to practice drawing lines. 

Under the Sea Sensory Activities

Last week we had two activities with an "Under the Sea" theme. Both activities involved sensory play. I'm sure over the years we will have many more "Under the Sea" themed activities! 

Activity #1
The first activity involved a bit of messy play! We are still somewhat new to messy play, so there's a bit of hesitation with one of my littles. For this activity, I purchased cheap shaving cream and use food coloring to color it blue to represent water. I gathered several of our sea animal collection and added it to our tray of shaving cream. I thought there would be hesitation (and I was right), so I had a bowl of warm water beside this. They could "save" the animal and wash it, which eliminated some of the "mess" - fine by me! By the end, I had one little alllllll in the shaving cream with her hands! 

I can't wait to try other messy play ideas when it's warmer out and we can do them outside!
Activity #2:
The second activity consisted of a sensory bin with rice, sea animals, scoops, and mini bowls. For this activity, I dyed rice different shades of blue and added the animals. Later I added scoops and bowls because my littles LOVE to scoop and pour! They are still learning  pretend play and they much prepared scooping and pouring! It still made for a cute activity and they loved it!
 We used the same sea animals from the previous activity.


Hands on with Fractions & Decimals

Happy Friday! Today I am sharing an activity you could use at home or in the classroom when teaching fractions and decimals! This activity works well to provide a visual base ten model for students while learning the concept of fractions and decimals in tenths. We used a dry erase board for a little extra fun, but you could easily use pencil/paper.

Materials:

  • Natural craft sticks
  • Colored craft sticks
  • Dry erase board, paper/pencil, etc. 

 I used a total of ten craft sticks each time to represent a base ten model. The colored craft sticks are what we were naming as a fraction and a decimal.


This activity could be used at the beginning of a unit to introduce the topic OR it could easily be used in math centers in a classroom! Students could create their own model and then identify the fraction and decimal.

Sensory Bin

Sensory bins are one of our favorite activities around here and I try hard to always have a sensory bin out! This style of sensory bin is always my little ones FAVORITE, so you could say it's a "regular" around here. It's so incredibly easy to put together and the materials are all budget friendly!

Materials:

  • Beans (any kind will do)
  • Various types of utensils (here I have wooden scoops, tongs, and a measuring cup)
  • Mini bowls (I believe they are for condiments)
  • Mini plastic shot glasses (YES, you read that right! They are the PERFECT size for sensory play!)
My girls LOVE to scoop and pour, so this is ALWAYS a hit! It is one we keep on rotation all the time. I change up the utensils every now and then, but the main components are always the same.



Sensory Play

Happy Friday! I'm popping in quick to share TWO sensory play experiences we've had lately. I always, always have a sensory bin out and usually switch them out every two weeks or so. These two activities didn't go in our sensory bin. We kept them separate, but enjoyed them so much.

Sensory Play #1: Every now and then I find this play foam in the Target Dollar Spot. I always grab it when I see it! This month we used green for St. Patrick's Day! Play foam is neat because it can form together to create a ball, but it's flexible and squishy enough to stretch and flatten (we made "pancakes" with it). It doesn't last very long in our house because things stick to it and it becomes a little icky (especially after being used as a basketball!), but it's always a fun activity with a different texture!
Sensory Play #2: Our occupational therapist recently brought us water beads and they are AWESOME! One of my kids loved squishing her hand down in them and loved the feel of it. One didn't prefer it, so we worked on pincer grip by having her transfer them from one container to the next. My oldest really enjoyed water beads as well! This is going to be a MUST in our sensory play from now on!

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