"Learning Time" Series: Fine Motor Practice and Graphing

{This is my last post of the series. =) I've enjoyed recording the ways Garrison has learned new things and the little activities I've done with him. And since we're currently working on learning lowercase letters I'll have to write about that sometime in the future. Hopefully all this documentation will come in handy once Austin gets a little older. Speaking of Austin... since I've been so focused on writing about Garrison and all the things I've done or do with him, I've missed writing about my littlest man. So, coming soon I will be posting all about what baby boy has been up to for the past week or so. Let's just say he's kept me on my toes. Big time!}

Fine Motor Practice

I've been working on fine motor practice with Garrison for a while. It's something boys have a harder time with and it's something as a teacher I always wished was focused on more at a really early age... way before 2nd grade when they got to me (again I'm referring more to boys). The good news is that it's SO easy to work those fine motors and you can use things you already have. And most of the time you don't even have to plan for it, it just comes up in their regular "play".

There is one activity I did plan for and I found it here. Little man enjoys it, plus we've added creating shapes to the mix. =) It's time consuming (so much so that the 2nd time he did this activity he decided to do a few, go do something else, come back and do a few more...), it requires some patience, and it works the fine motors. =)

The other "on purpose" thing I like to do for fine motor practice is Lace and Trace/Sewing cards. At first Garrison wasn't interested in them, but once he finally came around he got into doing them and actually enjoys it. We usually only do 1 card or animal at a time since that's about all his attention span can handle, but it's practice nonetheless and it will definitely be something we take to restaurants or doctor's appointments. 

Here's my generic list of ways to introduce and start fine motor practice:

*Puzzles (especially the ones with knobs)

*Coloring

*Play doh

*Writing/drawing on a magna doodle

*Gluing with a glue stick

*Using saftey scissors  =)

*Tracing letters or shapes on the magna doodle or a sheet of paper

*Stacking anything small (blocks, puzzle pieces, Cheez-Its, cereal, etc)

*Clipping clothespins onto something (we've tried paper and it was really hard for the little man)

There are tons and tons of ideas out there for fine motor development but we're just not ready for all of them yet. 

Graphing

I found this graphing activity and decided I had to try it with Garrison. I'm not sure why I just had to do it. I guess I was just impressed by the idea, plus I see everything through the eyes of a teacher. Which is good and bad. I'm not sure if Garrison was ready for this or not. In some ways I'm thinking he was because it was just an introduction to graphing so it was a new and challenging learning experience for him. But in some ways, I think it was just so much to process that maybe with Austin I should wait until he's closer to 3.5 or 4. Hmmm.

He did have fun with it though after he finally understood what we were doing. He pulled a mode of transportation out of the bag, we decided if it traveled on land, water, or in the air, then we graphed it. Of course the picture of our final product was deleted. Oh well. And I discovered that he doesn't know what "least" means. Cause when I asked him which mode of transportation had the least... these, these or these?... he looked at me like I was crazy. Ha!



After doing the transportation graph I decided to do a quick graph of Fruit Jammers. He "got" this one a little more and even got to enjoy a few for a morning snack after we finished. =) We've also pulled out this graph again for graphing more Fruit Jammers, and Skittles from his Easter candy stash.

Graphing is serious business!