Preschool Toddler
Fine Motor Activities
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Although I didn’t have a lot of time to post much during the holidays, our Tot School adventures have continued and we spent a little bit of our time over the holiday break reviewing our shapes and colors.
At this point, Nicholas seems to have a pretty good grasp on the names of colors and shapes but sometimes mixes them up a bit. So, for our review, I wanted to give him something that he could hold, manipulate and play with. Something much more hands on than simple pictures. Something he could build with.
Popsicle sticks make a fantastic manipulative since they are thin and small. They aren’t so small that little hands can’t pick them up but they do give those fine motor skills a work out. Not to mention that these are incredibly easy to make!
So, if you’d like to make a few colorful manipulative shapes yourself, here’s a little tutorial :)
You’ll need:
Some popsicle sticks
Paint brush
Paint
Velcro (self-adhesive makes it easier)
Paint your popsicle sticks a variety of colors. To make a little easier for Nicholas, I painted the sticks to make each shape a different color.
Once they are all dry, add your velcro to each stick. You’ll need to add velcro to both sides of the popsicle stick. Take my advice, it will be much easier on you in the end if you put the soft side of velcro on both ends of the same side and the scratchy side of velcro on both ends of the other side.
And start creating shapes! We made a diamond, triangle, square, star and a rectangle. Later on, we used all of the different colors together to see what other shapes and pictures we could come up with.
What shapes would you make?
