Structured Play

Children's fine or small motor skills develop at a different rate, like any skill. As a generalization, boys fine motor skills tend to strengthen later than girls. We have all noticed children struggling with holding a pencil, coloring, cutting, and especially with handwriting.  Here is a diagram of pencil holds and ages children move through the stages. But what happens when a five or six year old is still in the digital grasp stage? How do you help a child that is not comfortable trying a tripod grasp?  Pencil Grip Holders can really help guide a child into the correct grasp but it is not an end all be all for every child. To truly build that fine motor skill children need to strengthen the muscles in their hands. The best way to strengthen the hand muscles is to give children time to PLAY with their hands!  Building with LEGOS Play with Play-doh Explore in Sensory Boxes Providing opportunities for children to use their ...

One of the activities we are doing this summer with my big boy (5 year old), is a sight word book  (Pre-K, Kindergarten) in preparation for kindergarten. I bought this printable book on Teachers Pay Teachers . This is a great site where teachers provide the work they have done either for free or a small amount.  Once you buy the printable you print and have the child cut and glue the pages into a notebook. This is a great resource because it builds not only sight word recognition but also gives them an opportunity to cut, glue and color. And write! This is the first sight word and the first two pages. I worked with Jacob to put it all together in hopes that next time he will know how to do it himself. I did not nit-pick, this time, for a number of reasons; I want him to feel sucess so it it not a fight every time we do it, I want him to see grown with cutting, coloring and writing skills as the summer continues, and I want him to see that it might not look his best...

My big boy, Jake is really into telling stories and making up tales. He does NOT like to attempt to write, though. He has trouble with his fine motor skills and if he cannot do something he does not want to try!   Roaring Springs has these super Color Me Notebooks with pictured covers. You can color the pictures and the inside of the notebook is just lined paper. I saw these and got inspired. I knew that Jacob would love these and want to color right away. My idea was to use the cover as inspiration for writing a story. Jake saw this and jumped right in! He colored the front and named the story The Missing Shark and Turtle. I convinced Jacob to write his name (getting there) and we started the story. I wrote what Jacob told me to write- exactly. I repeated it as I wrote then read it back to him after we finished that page. This process caused some editing on his part. (You can see those below.) After I finished writing a page he illustrated it.  I love that he w...

This simple Story Board was created two years ago for Jacob to work on putting together a turkey. It was an easy little way to introduce story boards. Now a couple years later, I decided to take this to the next step. I had Jake put together the turkey and then tell me a story about the turkey. For a pre-writing add on I wrote the story as he told it to me. I did have to prompt him slightly to extend his story and include story elements. Of course, as a pre-writing activity, it is a very simple story but one just to get the idea started that this is how to write a story. By using the Story Board it helps spark inspiration and can be used to stretch the story by adding more detail. 

To do a little name practice this month I decided to put the letters of his name on little pumpkins. I had the pumpkins sitting out on the floor and just asked him to use the letters to spell his name. He just stared at me and told me he didn't know how to spell his name. I reminded him that he could in fact spell his name. We sang his name song to remind him: There was a boy that mama loved and Jacob was his name o', J.A.C.O.B. J.A.C.O.B. J.A.C.O.B. And Jacob was his name o'! He then chose to participate and pick the letters in order to spell his name. For some reason he always forgets the A when spelling his name. I give a gentle reminder and he squeezes it in. After he put is name together, I left the pumpkins out. Occasionally I would walk by and switch them up not saying anything. When he noticed the first time he said, "That is not my name." And proceeded to correct it. From then on I would walk by and rearrange two pumpkins to try to catch h...

As a fun and different way to practice the alphabet I had Jake paint the letters. He really just traced the letters with paint and a q-tip. I wrote all the letters and then had him trace over them. He is not ready to write  all the letters on his own so this is a good way to practice. He gets frustrated with his lack of motor skills when writing so I thought it would make a little practice exciting. Paint makes it much easier to trace and helps build confidence. He really enjoyed this and did not get frustrated at all. He tends to scribble over the letters when using a crayon to trace letters. This did not happen for most of the letters. He did great!

Jacob did a little name writing practice today. He was asked to trace the dotted lines to write letters for his name. This is good practice with spelling as well. I had him say each letter as he wrote the letter.  As you can see he is very choppy and not exactly on the dotted lines. His motor skills are not quite sharp enough yet to be able to hold the crayon and he especially loses control as he works on towards the end. We also did a Missing Letter Name Practice. Both of these ideas came from Cherrios and Lattes ' Play to Write, Write to Read. These are good ways to practice names and writing. He gets very angry if he thinks he made a mistake. See the scribbling. I have to reinforce that it is ok to make a mistake and that everyone makes mistakes but we just keep trying. Practice is the only way to get better. When this happens I cannot help but think of my former students that did the very same thing and proceeded to throw fits and give up. I hope to help Jacob ge...

We participating in a Wednesday Play Group called Play to Write over at Cherrios and Lattes . This is week 3- Write/Spell Your Name.  We started this week's practice with some name tracing. Cherrios and Lattes provides the printable for some dotted letters. She suggested doing rainbow writing with this sheet. I showed Jacob but he was more interested in writing all the Jacobs. I started by modeling on the first name. Then I held his hand and we did it together. Finally I let him do the last three on his own with only my verbal prompts.  He took this very seriously and was very proud of himself! I was surprised at how much he liked doing this activity. He has a long way to go but he did pretty well! One thing I had to repeat was not to go around the o and a more than once. He wanted to go around and around. This is an activity that I think he will want to do again! The next activity was Missing Letter Name Practice. We started by singing a little song I sing fo...

As stated in the Sunday Showcase , we will be joining a Wednesday Play Group with Cherrios and Lattes : Play to Write- Write to Read. Our first week's assignment was some skill building with line drawing and a writing prompt. Both of these are activities we have done before so we were ready to hop right in. I took two pieces of construction paper and drew wavy lines, jagged lines, castle lines and straight lines. We did our Structured Play time after nap and Jake was a little grouchy. I read a few books first to attempt to loosen him up but he was still not exactly cooperative. I asked him to trace the lines. I helped him with the first line and then he deliberately drew straight over the second line, trying to get a reaction. I just said, "Wow, you did not do as I asked but you drew a straight line, that is really good. I wonder if you can draw a wavy line too?" He didn't exactly jump right in but he did participate.  And on to the next side of the pap...