To help practice those fine motor skills, this activity was designed so that the only real intention, or outcome, that I was looking for was for her to practice working within tight confines. Staying in the lines!
As children work toward developing those early literacy skills and start to move towards writing letters and words, working with some order and within some confines can be very helpful in developing the fine motor skills that they will require in order to be able to write.
On a long piece of paper I drew a very simple flower garden with thick, black permanent marker
I provided a fine paintbrush and some glitter glue/paint along with the instructions that we were only working inside the lines today
I chose the glitter glue/paint as it is see-through so that you could always see the lines even when the paint was on them
She enjoyed this activity and it kept her concentrating and focused for quite some time
Handy tips:
- I used a garden so that it could have lots of tight lines and small spaces to work within but obviously you could draw anything that would take your child's fancy
- Extend this activity by letting your child draw the design first and then paint within it's confines
- Simplify this activity by drawing larger spaces for your child to work within
- Repeat this activity with different designs etc and using different sizes of brushes and different paints etc
- Stay near your child while they do this so you can give them gentle reminders about their purpose
Happy playing,
Debs :)
Look where else we are. Are you following along? :)
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She did a great job too!
ReplyDeleteShe's not a "stay in the lines" kind of girl, lol, so I thought she did well too :D
DeleteThis is a great idea. We do not keep coloring books in the home, but I do agree that it is important to expose children to everything. Also ,this activity is fantastic for hand eye coordination and fine motor!
ReplyDeleteThanks for taking the time to comment :D
DeleteFun activity. I agree that it's important sometimes to work inside the lines. My girls love their coloring books too much tp give that up completely. And there is still some creativity involved while developing fine motor skills. Thanks for following me, I'm following you back.
ReplyDeleteThanks Brooke. All children work differently and there are some where working within boundaries is all they feel comfortable with. In Primary School some children *need* worksheets and proformas to work within and others need a blank piece of paper to be most effective. I think where we go wrong is by "banning" certain types of activities etc, because we believe that we are hindering their creativity etc. I think that so long as we are exposing our children to all different types of activities and ways of working, we are doing the right thing :)
DeleteAND- being able to work within the lines, on the lines, etc, is vital for early literacy skills :)
haha- maybe I should have written that in my post, and not just to you, lol. Thanks for following, Debs :)