Ruth’s birthday party was a success, Fourth of July festivities were a blast, and now here we are at the last of the fine-motor Friday series! This week is all about activities that require careful and precise movements of the hands, what handwriting is all about!
So let’s just jump right into things:
Tracing: Have students place small items onto various types of lines, letters, or numbers. The smaller the item, the more work the students will need to do to “trace” the lines! Rice, especially fun colored rice, would work wonders as would beans or beads. Let your imagination fly! Want less mess? Laminating the tracing lines allows students to do the tracing with dry erase markers. Really get students practicing the precise motions of handwriting by providing different lines that students have to trace multiple times with multiple colors, like Rainbow Writing, but with lines rather than words, then add the words in later! Use these print -and-go sight word cards to easily print words on index cards to use! This post has AWESOME tracing ideas with printable cards for free.
Peg Boards: I found a set of little colorful pegs and pegboards in a coworkers “get rid of” pile and picked them up right away! Creating pictures, letters, number, shapes by placing pegs into specific holes can be a challenging fun activity for students. Unless you’re as lucky as I was to find a set for free, this activity requires purchasing a set of your own. I haven’t found a good DIY yet! There are plenty of pegboards to purchase for this activity, or add some creative flair by getting some “mini pegboards”, otherwise known as Perler beads. Even if you don’t fuse the beads together after students create, the process of placing the mini beads onto the boards is excellent fine-motor practice! Amazon has tons of options at varying price points.
Balancing: Talk about careful movement, making objects balance is tough! One easy balancing activity I found involves golf tees, marbles, and some sturdy thing that keeps the golf tees upright. Foam would be simple and easy, or a piece of pegboard from a hardware store. Anyways, students would simply put marbles on the golf tees so they stay on. Simple, easy, and effective! Thinking back to last week’s Pinch and Squeeze post, students could use tongs of some kind to pick up and balance the marbles, adding some extra difficulty.Another idea is to make it a game! Set the golf tees up in the foam (or whatever you’re using to hold them up) in a gameboard-like configuration and give each student a different color marble. Students have to read the word, solve the fact, make the sound, whatever the skill may be in order to roll a die and move that number of tees. If the marble falls while the student is placing it on the tee, they have to go back to the beginning or back a certain number of spaces. Fun!!
Beading: Beading anything requires a lot of precision and can be as simple as giving students beads and strings or pipe cleaners, but there are ways to make it more interesting and add in some math practice! Place skewers in playdough balls to keep them upright, roll a dice, and have students add that number of beads to the stick. Make it a partner game by having students each set up their own skewer, take turns rolling 2 dice, find the total, then add that number of beads to their skewer to “race to the top!” First player that fills their skewer wins! Another option, inspired by this pin on Pinterest, would be to line up 10 upright skewers and have students build a “ladder” with the beads, adding 1 bead to the first skewer, 2 beads to the second skewer, 3 beads to the third, and so on, building number sense visually.
Lacing: Traditional lacing (similar to beading) is another great activity for providing practice with careful hand movements. Laminate shapes or big blocked letters/numbers and use a hole punch to create holes around the edges. Students use strings (or pipe cleaners would work and require a bit of extra resistance for strengthening) to move up through one hole, then down through the next following that up/down pattern until they’re finished. It’s just like sewing, really.
Straw Threading: Simply punch holes around a toilet paper or paper towel roll and have students guide straws from one side of the roll to the next. Add an extra challenge by requiring students to match a lowercase letter from on side to it’s uppercase match on the opposite side, match an addition or subtraction fact to its sum or difference, or match parts of a compound word.
Tools: Grab some nuts and bolts, screws and screwdrivers and create a workshop activity. Kids will love working in this “workshop” putting together and taking apart these inexpensive items from the hardware store. Playing with the bolts and nuts not only requires students to practice precision in their hand movements similar to beading, but it also requires them to twist and manipulate the objects for extra fine-motor practice! Provide different sizes of bolts and nuts to add some problem solving to the tub. Providing a piece of wood with some pre-drilled holes and screws/screwdrivers is another fun way to build up that twisting hand strength while also requiring students to keep their tool and screw steady in one specific space.
And there it is! Fine-Motor Fridays has come to a close (except for the follow-up post(s) once the school year starts up to review how these activities are working in my classroom).
Let’s take a moment to recap this series:
Introduction: Why this Fine-Motor Friday thing even started.
Careful and Precise Moves
If you missed any of the above posts, go check them out and make sure to comment on your favorite activities!
Otherwise, please share with potentially interested friends and make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on whatever adventure comes next!
Comments