Friday, February 29, 2008

Fun With Fine!

Mommy tends to go on Educational Guilty Binges. What's that you ask? I start thinking about something (handwriting, dressing oneself, speaking, whatever) & then think "I'm not doing nearly enough to foster development in XYZ so I'd better step it up!

This past week, my EGB has been fine motor skills development. Do I think Reese lacks fine motor skills? Nope. Do I worry that I should/could be offering more opportunities to develop them? Absolutely.


On Monday, Reese & I went to Teacher's Tools looking for pipettes to use during CoOp on Wednesday. I cannot walk into that store without going into overload & I must exhibit serious self control to not purchase everything. There are so many manipulatives, games, puzzles, CDs, etc. that I would love to have.



We spent time putting together a life size skeleton puzzle. It had 15 foam pieces & as Reese assembled the puzzle over and over we talked about the names of the bones. He asked what your ribs were for. We felt for his pelvic bones. It was a great spur of the moment learning opportunity!



I ended up purchasing a few things: 1 minute sand timer (for brushing teeth), a GeoBoard and rubber bands, a dry erase board with a D'Nealian alphabet printed on it for tracing, & a latching board that Reese picked out.



When we got home, Reese dug right into the GeoBoard. We had fun making triangles, trapezoids, squares, lines. Reese made a flag & I made a boat. We talked about why you can't make a circle. I was surprised how hard it was for Reese to pull the rubber bands around the far-apart pegs. Good fine motor skill practice!

He also loved the latching board. It was $20 and I almost didn't purchase it, but once we got home and I saw how much fun he was having with it, I'm glad I did. Along with fine motor skill enhancement, he had a whole story going about the Bad Guys who were locked behind each door & in jail. He'd open the doors, they'd escape, & he'd catch them and lock them up again.
Scooping lentils from one bowl to another (with Buddy helping just in case anything falls to the ground).
Reese LOVES to help with laundry...it's probably his favorite way to help around the house. While he is great at sorting & loading the washer and dryer (with Mommy's help of course!), folding laundry is a new task. Usually, I let him wad up small items....if I'm folding his laundry, I'll give him all his undies to fold.

I thought it would be easy to fold dish towels since they're small & thinner than a bath towel and would fold easily. I laid out my dishtowel & he had his, and I showed him how to take one edge and make it "kiss" the other edge. Captain Perfection did a few that way the best he could, then got frustrated and started balling them up. I'm sure he'll help again!
Friday, we went to the park for what I had planned as a little play time before coming back home. Reese, however, had other plans. He made friends with a little girl his age & we ended up staying for almost 3 hours! The weather was great & how could I say no?

This slide prompted a great science talk. Every time Reese slid down, he would come over and shock me. He was very curious about why this was happening, so I gave my best off-the-top-of-my-head explanation.

He also had a great time swinging. Still working on pumping the legs....
More folding dish towels...
And more GeoBoard fun. Check out all those triangles! And check out that mohawk. I usually gel his hair in the morning, & this morning, he said "I want a mohawk." Who on Earth did he see with a mohawk???? He asked if he could get it cut that way, & that was a firm "No!" But I figure gel will wash out easy enough & it did look dang cute :)

1 comment:

Texasholly said...

So cute. It was beautiful on Friday, wish we could have joined you at the park. I like the rubber band board thingy and need to go get one for the boys...I think they would all really like that. I think we all think we could be doing more. I don't think you need to be worried about being a slacker--haha. That is out of the question.