Fine Motor Activities

Fine Motor strength is so important to develop in order to prepare students to write. We have a lot of fun fine motor activities and centers that we use. We find different materials to cut.

We use a vertical surface to draw, color and paint. For this activity, we painted blueberries with clothespins and blue pom poms.

Mini erasers can be used for many things such as tracing letters and sorting.

Giant pushpins can be used with supervision to make our names or letters, numerals and shapes.

Q-tips make a fun paintbrush that uses a different hand motion then swiping.

Many literacy and math games also use fine motor skills like this pie sorting game. We also practice fingerplays and draw in our journals to strengthen our fingers to get ready for kindergarten.

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Daily Preschool Schedule

Our Preschool runs a half day program so we have a morning class and a completely seperate afternoon class. Here's the lesson plan form that I have tweeked and found to be helpful in fitting everything into our short day. Class Name_________ Week #____ Day #____ Theme_____________ 9:00-9:25 Arrival and Free Choice Play 9:25-9:30 Clean Up 9:30-9:45 Morning Meeting and Music 9:45-10:00 Gross Motor Play 10:00-10:15 Math Circle Time 10:15-10:20 Brain Break and Movement 10:20-10:35 Fine Motor Table Work 10:35-10:55 Snack and Quiet Time 10:55-11:10 Literacy/Science/Social Studies Read Aloud Read: Focus: 11:10-11:25 Centers 1)math center: 2) art center: 3) fine motor center: 4)language arts center: 11:25-11:30 Clean up and Dismissal

Body and Senses Theme

I usually spend a day for each of the basic five senses and then further the theme by spending a few more days covering the basic parts and functions of the body such as heart, lungs, skin, and brain. For the sense of taste, I give each child something sour (lemon drop), something salty (pretzel), and something sweet (a piece of chocolate) to eat. We discuss the tastes and which they like the best. Then we discuss our tongues. Each student can be given a mirror to look into to see their tongue and the taste buds on it. We read "Jamberry" and try some different flavors of jam. For the sense of smell, I place items in film canisters and allow each child to smell each item and guess what it is. Then we graph which smells we like and do not like. A follow up activity is to ask students to determine which items will have a smell and then walk the items around and have students smell them and determine if their guesses were correct. I use things like mustard, a comb, or...

Bug Theme

When we study bugs, there are several activities I include in an effort to meet every student's ability and interests along with multiple curricular standards. I bought several bags of plastic bugs at my local Dollar Tree and also gathered a few other supplies and we are ready to look at bugs and investigate them-how many legs do they have? How many body parts do they have? What other characteristics do they have? Then we sort them-insects or not insects. Count how many are in each category. Take some time outdoors as well looking for insects and allowing the students to move in larger ways. Run through the grass but also get down and crawl. Take magnifying lenses out with you and see how many insects can be found. On another day we sort the bugs by color. We identify each color and again count how many bugs are in each category. We use tweezers to sort the bugs so that we are working on our fine motor skills as well. Write the color words where the children can easily see the...

Engaged Early Learning

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