Fine Motor Skills

We've started some Fine Motor Stations in the morning, when kids first arrive at school.  These are activities designed to build muscle strength in our little hands and fingers, which in turn helps us in our ability to write.

I really LOVE Play-Doh and clay!  I will be sharing homemade Play-Doh recipes in an upcoming post.  

Pinching with tongs is a great way to build strength in our hands!  I put some squishy plastic balls in our bean table and gave the kids the challenge to remove them all with different types of tongs.  Challenge accepted!!

Legos are one of my favorite toys for building muscles in our fingers.  In addition, Legos are just awesome for developing creativity.

Once kids have the proper pencil grips, I encourage them to do some tracing and use our stencils.

This is one of my favorite stations.  We have a sand tray, rocks, and shells that kids use to create art pieces.  I take pictures of their pieces of work to display in the classroom.  Any activity that invites the kids to pinch like you see in the picture below, is awesome for developing muscles.  

We are writers in kindergarten and every fine motor activity we try will help us build the muscles and stamina we need for writing. 

You may have noticed your child coming home and showing you a bit of sign language.  We are on a mission to learn the signs for 26 letters in the first 20 days of school and we've almost reached our goal!  Not only does sign language help us connect our actions to letters and sounds, but we are also (secretly) sneaking in a bit of fine motor work!

I would encourage you to think about adding some fine motor activities into your daily routines.  Counting Cheerios, by moving them one by one, watering plants with a spray bottle, painting with small brushes, drawing with markers, and even cutting coupons from the Sunday paper are all great ways to build muscles in our hands!

Have fun!

Play Based Centers

Our play-based centers were a HUGE hit with the kindergarten students this week!  The goal of these centers is to provide kids the opportunity to self-select projects to work on, based on their own interest.  As you can imagine, getting 22 five year olds to work on projects together for a sustained period of time is a remarkable challenge.  We begin this work by introducing areas of play which are familiar to kids.  These are things they may already be familiar with and probably know how to work with appropriately.  Adding friends to the mix, learning to share materials, and learning to interact with one another is our next step.  This week, our focus was just on learning to love and take care of ourselves, our classroom, and our community.

We opened up the bean/sensory table and added scoops for measuring.

The Lego table was open for building and lots of imaginative play.

The ponies are an absolute favorite!  I've loved watching the kids have their ponies take on the roll of certain characters.

The kids love the barn too. I picked this up for my daughter at a garage sale, many years ago.  She loved telling stories with her horses too and I would take pictures of each scene for her to make a book out of later.

The Home Center can be messy at times, but it has already been turned into a kitchen inside of a home, a restaurant, and a coffee shop.

Dora's dollhouse is another one of those activities that builds the language kids need for story telling.  I often hear kids saying things like, "Maybe we should have Dora be walking to her grandma's house and then Swiper can come up and find her."  Just like that, they are identifying characters and coming up with a problem for the story.

The cars and our rug mat have become a place of counting and dividing.  The kids love to line up all of the cars and then make sure everyone has an even number.  

Playdough has to be my personal favorite center.  I make playdough for each new month and put different toys out for kids to explore.  Playdough is great for developing fine motor skills, as it builds the muscles in our hands and fingers.

As I mentioned, the play-based centers will become more play/project based as the year goes on.  Right now, I want these kids to LOVE coming to school each day.  I want them to learn to take care of themselves, take care of each other, and take care of our classroom.  They are wonderful children with beautiful hearts and this is an amazing time for them!

Happy playing!

Block Play in the Kindergarten Classroom

Every kindergarten teacher will tell you that the block area is always a favorite center.  It doesn’t matter if they are big blocks, little blocks, wooden blocks, or cardboard blocks.  The minute the block center is opened up, so is the creativity.

One of my favorite new activities is to print out pictures of famous buildings and place them in the block center.  The kids love creating buildings like those in the pictures.

Building with blocks is a great way to integrate thematic play into the day.  The block area can be a zoo, horse coral, farmyard, big city, or a construction zone.  Any theme you are exploring in your home or classroom can transfer into the block area.

When towers are the structures of choice, we add blank papers, markers, and tape so kids can write names for their buildings.

Do you have blocks in your home?  If you do, it's time to break them out again and introduce a few new materials into the block center.  It's a great time for creativity!

Happy building!

The Importance of Play - Kindergarten Center Time

 One of my absolute favorite time of the day in Kindergarten is our Center Time.  Over the past 10 years, standards have changed, and in some ways (lots of ways) I feel that Kindergarten is the new First Grade.  Even with all of the pressure to have rigor in the classroom with regards to curriculum, I will always find time for play.  There is so much research around the benefits of play in the Pre-K and Kindergarten settings.  One of my favorite books is called The Importance of Play by Vivian Paley. So, twice a week we play.  We reserve our Center time for days when we don't have Music, Library, or PE.  Kids get to play and explore, use language to learn new ideas, practice sharing and working as a team, and just be messy and have fun.

There is a lot of messy play during Center Time. I want to be able to provide clay, play doh, paints, and things that splatter all over the tables.  I have no problem wiping up paint and shaving cream if it means the kids get that sensory experience.

The Sensory Table has been a fast-favorite.  Right now it's filled with wheat kernels.  My cousin is a wheat farmer and saved a big bag for me.  Right now, we are just working on taking turns, sharing materials, and learning to contain the mess just a little bit.  Soon, we will add measuring cups, scoops, and funnels.  It's a great way for kids to explore capacity.

The Lego table is always a hit, especially with the boys.  I've always wondered why Legos draw the boys, and not as many girls.  The kids love building spaceships and cars.  They are learning how to share the wheels because there are never enough to go around.  Legos are great for small motor development.  It's really hard work pinching those little pieces and taking them apart.  The language the kids use while creating their spaceships is impressive.  Today I heard someone say that the spear on their ship reminded them of a Narwhal.  That comment led to kids asking, "What's a narwhal?"  It's a perfect example of the way oral language is developed through play time.

I have to admit, it kind of made me sad the day that my son (who is now 13) told me I could take his cars into the classroom.  Kids LOVE playing cars.  Sometimes I pair the cars with a racetrack carpet and other times I put out the blocks and traffic signs.  I love watching the kids build a city out of their blocks and then drive their cars around.  The planning that goes into their city is amazing, and the various shapes of the blocks add an extra challenge to the construction.  Meanwhile, kids are reading the signs and talking to their friends about the "rules" in their new town.

My philosophy on parenthood goes like this:

"When all else fails, make some play dough."

I'm telling you, friends, play dough has saved my life on many occasions.  I will share the recipe soon.  Sometimes, on rainy days when my kids were young, I would whip up a batch of homemade play dough and the peace would be restored to my house in two minutes flat.  

I love adding play dough to our Center Time because the rolling, squishing, ball forming, and snake making is so wonderful for developing those small muscles in our hands that we need in order to hold a pencil and write.  With this batch of play dough, I added some cinnamon, a pie plate, and real apples as our inspiration.  Suddenly, we had a pie shop right in the Kindergarten classroom!  It's amazing what a little play dough and some imagination can do!!

There are so many more centers that I have to tell about.  We open about 7 or 8 different centers each day, and each has a different learning goal or experience to provide the kids.  Center time is a happy time in Kindergarten, as it should be!

Happy Play Time!