Fine Motor Development and Writing

As part of our Kindergarten Program, you may hear the phrase "fine motor" or "fine motor skills" tossed around quite a bit. Many people realize what this means, but many more do not realize the implications that fine motor development has on other areas of your child's education. As I like to think, we are not educating just the mind, but the whole child.

Fine motor development, in our program, refers to the hand. It talks about how strong a child's hand is, how coordinated their movements are, how precise they can be when doing small tasks, and how they hold and use writing instruments. The key to this, is the end of that sentence: "how they hold and use writing instruments".

We say that every skill is progressive-- your child cannot learn how to add if they have yet to count. They cannot write phonetically if they do not yet know their letters. They cannot kick a ball if they have a hard time standing on one foot. For writing, the first step is to develop the strength, precision and coordination in your child's hand so that they are able to hold a pencil, control the pencil with the proper movements and strengthen their grip so they can do this for an extended period of time (i.e. to write a sentence, vs being tired after writing their name).

I truly believe that no child can "over develop" their fine motor abilities. There is always something else they can explore or do. As well, I have yet to see a fine motor activity that simply teaches fine motor skills and does not work on other areas (math, language, science and technology, etc). As a result, fine motor is seen throughout our classroom in a variety of ways and in nearly every centre. You will see different sized writing instruments at the creative centre, you will see a variety of paint brushes at the painting areas, you will see playdough and tools at the fine motor table, you will see beads and string at the math area, and it goes on and on.

How do you know if your child is still working towards developing these skills? There are a few things that usually jump out when looking at a child's fine motor development. First, look at their writing. Are the movements confident, or are they shaky? Do they hold the writing tool in a way that allows them the freedom to move across the paper and create their strokes correctly? When using a zipper, can they put the zipper together? Are they able to pick up small objects successfully (pennies, small legos, beads)? Can they use their hand muscles for simple activities like opening yogurt (pudding lids are tricky for adults!) or breaking apart two blocks that are stuck together? If any of these items bring up a possible no, or if you are concerned about your child's fine motor development, here are some activities you can do at home to help your child develop the grip and strength they need to be successful future writers!

1. Have your child pick up pennies from a table and put them in a jar.
2. See if your child can use one hand to put wooden clothes pins. These can be used to pick up toys, hang up baby clothes for dolls, or even as a game to put on the edge of a bucket.
3. Allow your child opportunities to bead with string and beads that are difficult, but not impossible or frustrating, for them to use.
4. Give your child a chance to paint and draw with a variety of tools.
5. Make some playdough (there are several easy, no-bake recipes, such as this one) and have your child explore it.
6. Have your child play a game where they put pom-poms into a jar using tweezers.
7. Allow exploration with legos or other snap-together building blocks.
8. Have your child use scissors at home. Scissor skills help to strengthen hand muscles and work with precision. Scissors are not just for paper! Try using them with playdough or clay.
9. Have a bucket of bolts and nuts that can be manipulated.
10. Practice doing up and undoing buttons and snaps.

Happy practicing!

Happy Diwali!

*** EDIT***  If there is a holiday you celebrate at home, that you would like to help us celebrate at school, please feel free to help us find ways to celebrate! We respect all cultural and religious backgrounds and would love to learn more about a celebration that is coming up and important in your family.



Today was our Diwali celebration! Yesterday we learned a song about Diwali and painted diyas. Today we saw a short video about Diwali, talked about how people celebrate (I hear a few people watch fireworks in Brampton!), and sang our song. As Mrs. Saini was away today, celebrating Diwali with her family, we will also be creating our very own rangoli designs tomorrow with coloured salt.

Some of the diyas as the paint dried.

 If you are interested in seeing the video we watched (it was great!) it is here. You can skip the puzzle and go right to the "start" button.


In other news, it looks like we have some realism painters among us. Miss. Biasuitti brought us a poinsettia and look at the beautiful drawings that emerged!

Painting the red leaves by studying their shapes.

This friend was looking at how the red petals and green leaves blended together in the plant.

Just So Creative!

You may remember that I mentioned a few days ago that we would be creating a PetsMart in our dramatic centre. It was held off for Halloween festivities and in the five days that have followed that, the drama centre has been used as:
-a house for people to play "house" (mom, dad, baby, sister, brother, etc)
-a house that needs to be fixed (repair sink, fridge, etc)
-a car lot
-a doctors office
-a poppy store
-a princess castle
-a puppet theatre

And these are likely only a FEW of the things that we have seen! As a result, the PetsMart is being put on hiatus until we can brainstorm what we'd like to do... er... again.

I will give a hint towards what I believe might be stirring! Our neighbouring Kindergarten's made a zoo (complete with children dressed like animals and tour guides). They invited us over by making tickets to their zoo and creating signs for when the shows would begin. Of COURSE we had to go! As soon as the students came back, they all started making tickets. After 30 or so, they were bored, so I pulled out a roll of tickets from the Dollarama and we were back on track. They want to give the tickets to their friends in the other Kindergarten classes, but they have been told they cannot do so until they decide why they are giving them tickets. Is it for a movie theatre? A zoo? A play? A puppet show? Once they decide, and we build it, we will invite friends over to see.

Stay tuned for all the fun!

Remembrance Day

This week we are talking about Remembrance Day, as it is coming up this weekend and our school is recognizing it on Friday. As a Full Day Kindergarten, we are often much more active in the school than a typical half-day program because we are there all day! That means we go to many more assemblies and presentations. Fortunately, many people have recognized that, as great as the Kindergartens have been during assemblies, we are not quite ready to have 70 four- and five-year old students sit through a longer and very solemn ceremony. As a result, we are talking about Remembrance Day in our class and will be doing our own recognition on Friday in our classroom.

Today we talked about poppies and we listened to the story about why we remember in Kindergarten friendly terms. We talked about a horrible war where people died to make sure we stayed safe and free in Canada, and how we remember what they did on November 11.We discussed how poppies grew on Flanders Fields and how we wear a poppy to remember the people who died to make sure we were safe.

Throughout this week we will continue to explore Remembrance Day with our students and are looking forward to being able to share what we are learning with everyone at home.

Kelso's Choice

For the last two weeks we have been working on learning all about Kelso the frog and the choices he makes when he has a problem.

First we learned that there are two types of problems-- a big problem and a small problem. A big problem is something you need a grown up to help you with, such as a fire, stranger danger, or someone who is hurt. A small problem is something a kid can solve, such as breaking a structure, not sharing or bumping into someone.

When we have a big problem, we tell a grown up RIGHT AWAY! When we have a small problem, we use two of Kelso's choices to help us solve the problem.

Today we sent home a copy of Kelso's Choices to help your child to focus on problem solving at home. At school, our friends have been doing an amazing job of making two choices to solve their problem before telling an adult. They also have Kelso living in our classroom to help them out if they forget. By reinforcing Kelso's choices at home, you will help your child to be a better problem solver at school!

An Artistic Type of Day

Today Mrs. Saini and I decided to put out Halloween themed stamps and paint at the messy table. Out came the paper! Out came the stamps! Out came a completely new direction to our plans!

Within minutes of digging in we had:

String art....

Look at the experiments with symmetry!

Finger painting...

Colour mixing, writing and general fun!

Stamping....

Exploring the correct amount of paint to put on the stamp. Too much paint made globby pictures.

And although there are no pictures, there were colour mixing activities occuring in the sink after messy hands were washed off. How they used the paint was fantastic. In the end, we talked about symmetry, patterning, directionality, sensory experiences, colours, letters, writing, and more.

So of course, I turned around and, my goodness, there were art activities being explored all over the room! At the creative centre we had a student exploring hole punches...

Super strength to push that punch!

Someone else was drawing a lovely picture with our markers...

Scary costume!

And someone else was writing a letter to Mr. McCutcheon...

Mr. McCutcheon is going to have a lot of writing to do!

At the creative centre we were exploring writing, communication, pencil grips, telling stories with pictures, counting shapes, developing hand muscles, exploring colour and sharing.



Finally, our builders were hard at work preparing our drama centre. On Monday we are making it into a PetsMart. A few boys were working hard to ensure that it was "fixed" and ready for the pets. Stay tuned to see our drama centre come into fruition!

Halloween Spook-tacular!

What a fantastic week! On October 30th we enjoyed carving pumpkins and roasting our seeds. Every child put two scoops of salted pumpkin seeds in a bag to take home and share with their family. On October 31st we celebrated all things Halloween! Everyone did a great job remembering our rules (no fighting-- even if you are a superhero or ninja, no replica weapons and no masks), and I don't quite think I've ever had so many iron men or kitty cats in one room!

We had fun at our halloween parade where a spooky teacher taught us how to walk up the catwalk to show off our costumes, and monitored the Clap-O-Meter where we clapped for our favorite teacher costumes.

The spooky m/c didn't scare us!

After our parade we continued our regular day until 1:15, when it was time for our party! Everyone got a cupcake, cup of icing, candies and punch. We decorated and ate our hearts out. It was a very pleasant surprise to see so many students independently making the choice to get some healthy snacks! They munched down on carrots, grapes, cucumbers and apples until there were none left.

Lots of cupcake... lots of carrots!

I believe this was plate two or three of grapes for this friend!

We are looking forward to hearing all of our friends spooky Halloween experiences!