Activities for young children that would develop skills such as cutting, tearing, sticking, fine motor skils?

Question

Activities for young children that would develop skills such as cutting, tearing, sticking, fine motor skils?

Answer 1

Yes, I love collages!

I have a website that also has some animal alphabet puppets with large dashed lines for the children to cut around.

There are lots of coloring pages, but I like to remind people that there is so much more to children's art than crayons!

Check out the alphabet animal puppets at:

http://www.quality-kids-crafts.com/puppe...

and some of the other coloring pages at:

http://www.quality-kids-crafts.com/color...

The numbers coloring pages have squares for children to glue or draw items to represent the number.  This is great fun for pasta or cutting and tearing out of magazines (for example, say you are using the number five this week, have children find five pictures of shoes and paste them on the page).

The fruit coloring pages http://www.quality-kids-crafts.com/color... are fun, especially the grapes, you can have children use bingo dobbers or use their fingerprints on a stamp pad or finger paint to make dots for the grapes.

Keep in mind that play dough is great for developing fine muscles, and manipulatives include puzzles, lacing beads, lacing cards, blocks, etc.  

Lots of games are also available for fine motor that use plastic tongs to feed bananas to monkeys, carrots to bunny rabbits, etc.

Have fun!

Answer 2

get them a pair of those small kiddie scissors and some construction paper and paste andtrace things for them to cut out, like stars, hearts, etc.  After they cut the stuff out have them paste them onto another piece of paper or cardboard or whatever.  They can make hanging things with paper plates and glitter  and the stuff they cut out.  You can put a piece of yarn to hang them with (the plates, not the kids hahaha!!!)  Have them cut out a string of paper dolls all connected together or make snowflakes out of folded const. paper.

Answer 3

Start by having them tear paper and glue it on other paper to make a collage. Add lots of other interesting things to glue on. Make sure they have lots of experience with doughs and clays-not to make something, just to play with. Avoid tools. Let them tear up a roll of toilet paper. Put it in a dishpan with water and liquid detergent to make clay. When you think they are ready move on to blunt scissors. Don't forget the lefties. Give them lots of opportunities to cut without having to follow a line. Only when they are really secure with that is it time to move on to cutting on a line-straight first,then curves. For another great sticking activity invest in packages of sticky dots of all sizes and shapes at an office supply store-the kind you peel and stick. Kids as young as Toddlers love using these and sticking them on almost anything.

Answer 4

Collage making. This is one of the best activities for teaching all the skills.

Make large shapes that they can cut out.

Get magazines and let them tear out the pages for collages.

Glueing activities and stickers.

coloring, drawing, etc for fine motor skills, beading also is good for this. Macaroni necklaces.

Answer 5

In general, those activities you mentioned lead to developing fine motor skills...here are some fine motor activities that I've had success with.

* peg puzzles- these lead to an appropiate 3 finger hold that we use for writing.

* I like to do group collages and murals.  You can keep them up for the week and they can continue to work on them.  Having the scissors out with bright paper, glue sticks, and a black posterboard is really neat.  Recently I did a transportation and zoo murals with the kids.  With the zoo...I provided the large paper, crayons, scissors, crayons, and animal to cut out.  They colored, cut them out and glued them on the paper.  Then they took off with adding rocks, water, trees, signs, names of animals, etc.  The transportation was ended up being a road with cars on it.

* popping bubble wrap.  Using a hammer with bubble wrap.

*  golf tees in foam or in the fall...a pumpkin.  Use a hammer and they can pound and remove the tees. Very fun.

*  Someone mentioned contact paper.  You bet!  I like to use foam shapes and they can put them on or take them off.  I made a fall tree with fall leaf foamies.  Very cool.  After a while the foam leaves would "fall" off.  Goes right along with the seasons.

*  those window clings are actually great fine motor developers if you let them arrange and rearrange them.

*  I purchased "bug catchers"...discount school supply... they are like scissors with bubbles on the end.  I put them in our sensory table.

*  scissors and straws are messy but very fun. Then they can lace them and foam lacing cubes and make patterns and such.

* foam strips make nice beginning cutting material.

* the craft scissors, which the children call "crazy scissors" here, are nice for older preschool students.

* hole punches are great hand strengtheners

* playdough...making "white" playdough and rolling individual balls and placing a bit of coloring on the inside makes it more interesting for the children to kneed and we know that kneeding is a great way to build the strength in the hands the most.  Someone mentioned scissors with playdough...definately.  You can make it more fun by purchasing a "special" pair of scissors that look a little different then the typical ones and making them the playdough scissors.  Plastic knives and cutting boards are also a great hit with playdough.

* clothespin activities.  Around Thanksgiving time I have a half of heavy cardboard/paper plate that I decorated into a turkey.  We add clothespins for the feathers.  They enjoy putting clothespins on edges of cans/containers, on rulers, cardboard strips.  At a patterning activity by providing colored clothespines.

* if you have a chain linked fence around your playground allow the children to weave different materials.  In the classroom...make a weaving board or provide strawberry baskets or something similar.

* sensory table... provide tweezers. We added black beans to corn and the children picked out the "crows".

* eyedroppers...I provided an icecube tray with a little water and primary colors.  They mixed the color.  Very big hit!

* dramatic play- add towels and clothes to your housekeeping.  Folding towels and rolling socks are great ways to help with their fine motor skills.

* lacing boards---whether it be purchased lacing boards or homemade...you can make it theme related by laminating a cardstock shape and adding hole punches.

* magnets...preferably smaller ones are great fine motor activities.  You don't need a magnet board...go to the dollar store and get a metal pan.  :-)

*  table blocks---dominoes etc... some people forget about the simple 1" wooden blocks.  You can buy them in large quantities and colors.  Building towers is a very simple and enjoyable fine motor activity.

* having stencils in your art area is a good thing to do.  Along with texture boards for rubbing. You can make them yourself.

* A big sensory hit for us...:-)  A bowl of rubberbands.  I adding some very simple cookware, tweezers, tongs, and lids of containers.  Stretching those rubberbands around containers is a wonderful hand strengthener.

* on the same note...bottles with lids either in their own basket at your manipulative center or even discovery if you mix the lids.  You can also add them to your sensory table.  Twisting those lids are not only a big hit and cheap but a great fine motor skill.

* spray bottles for outside play (especially in the winter with colored water, if you have snow :-)) and at art time.

* Goo gloves, squishy bags... fill bags and/or gloves with paint.  Putting two colors in there incorporates some "science".  Using paint and glue makes a unique experiences.  You may wish to add sequins, foamies etc to the bags.  I use freezer bags and reinforce with packing tape.  One year I used permanent marker and drew a jack-o-lantern and added red and yellow paint blobs inside.  Then children enjoyed making orange jack-o-lanterns.  On plain bags they can practice writing letters, number, drawing shapes, etc.

*  Having an old "dial" phone...I don't know what they are called.  You can purchase those Fisher Price phones.  Adding a clock that they can move the hands in dramatic play.

* flannel board/velcro boards/ magnet boards

* As a theme starter I like to put a theme item in a box and wrap it with many layers...one per child.  Then we pass it around to a song.  When the song ends/stops that person guesses what it is and takes off one layer.  To add a literacy component you can write their guesses down.  

* wikki stix; magnadoodle, stencils, pipe cleaners in your fine motor area.

Oh, the list goes on.  Hope you get an idea or two to help you.  :-)

Answer 6

if you set up a `junk` modelling area every day as we do at our nursery and let the children go to it freely you will find they use all of the fine motor skill in a million diff ways, easy to do observational asses as well as you can join the activity area without actually taking part in the individuals work

Answer 7

Great ideas above. Only a few to add.

Our toddlers love cutting playdoh with scissors.

Get a roll of clear Contact paper (or might be called StickyTak depending on where you live). Kids can tear paper to stick on it. You can then stick the Contact paper on a sheet of construction paper or cover it with another clear sheet to make a "see thru" collage.