Welcome to the final Kinder Club blog post for this year. Kinder Club kits will be on hiatus until further notice as Mrs. K. and Ms. Jamie explore other methods of sharing our knowledge and love for early literacy.
Today’s kit highlights fine motor skills.
Fine Motor Skills
Fine motor skills involve the use of the small muscles in our hands, wrists, fingers, feet and toes. Strengthening the muscles in your fingers and hands will help you with writing/drawing, using utensils, tying your shoes and zipping your jacket.
Before we dive into this month’s Kinder Club Kit, let’s warm up the small muscles in our fingers with a song from one of Ms. Jamie’s favorite musicians for young children, Jim Gill! WOW! That was a lot of finger movement. Are your fingers tired yet? If so, go ahead and skip to the next section, but if your fingers need a little more action, try this classic from Pinkfong.
Now that you’ve warmed up your finger muscles, let’s look at the fine motor activities that were included in your Kinder Club Kit!
Tweezer Play*
*Don’t have a set of kid-friendly tweezers, use a clothespin (the kind with a spring) or a set of kitchen tongs.
Tweezers are an inexpensive, but valuable addition to your child’s kindergarten readiness toolkit because they help strengthen hand muscles, improve hand-eye coordination, and develop the pincer grasp. The pincer grasp is the ability to use your thumb and index finger to pick up small objects. Grownups do this all the time when we pick up a pen, sew a button onto clothing or put coins into a vending machine. Practicing and gaining strength from pincer grasp activities will help you firmly hold your pencil, crayons and scissors.
Your first tweezer challenge is to add “sprinkles” to your ice cream cone. Before trying to pick up any pony beads, make sure you have a comfortable but firm grasp on your tweezers using your thumb and index finger. Now slowly pick up one sprinkle at a time and add it to your cone. If using tweezers is too tricky for any of these activities, return to the basics and use your thumb and index finger to pick up your items.
Your next tweezer challenge is very similar to the one listed above, but this time you will be using your tweezers to pick up pom poms and add them to your ice cream cone. Roll the dice and add that many scoops to your cone. If you would like an additional challenge, place all your pom poms in a bowl and use a spoon to scoop them up and drop them onto your ice cream cone.
Mrs. K. and Ms. Jamie must have been a little hungry when we planned these Kinder Club Kit activities because now we are going to do an activity with gummy worms! But don’t actually eat these gummy worms because they aren’t real – they are just craft pipe cleaners. Start this activity by bending or curling your pipe cleaners into “worm” shapes. Next, lay your playing cards face down on the table or floor and flip over one card. Follow the directions on your card. What could you do if you flip over a card that asks you to remove worms from your jar, but you haven’t put any worms in the jar yet? Yes, you could keep turning over cards until you find one that says to add worms. Any other ideas? Yes, you could draw your own cards with any directions that you want. Great idea!
Peel and Stick Play
Peeling stickers might seem like a simple task, but it’s great for developing the pincer grasp and improving hand-eye coordination. Peeling stickers from their paper requires precise movements, engaging the small muscles in the hands and fingers. In your Kinder Club Kit, you have a ladybug that needs her spots. Use your thumb and index finger (the finger between your thumb and middle/tall finger) to peel your black stickers from their backing and stick them to the circles on the ladybug. Don’t forget to add the googly eyes to your ladybug by using a glue stick or tape!
Parents, do you ever receive stickers or address labels from various organizations or charities? Give them to your child with a sheet of scrap or construction paper and let them peel and stick. Do you have any Washi or painters’ tape? Stick a few strips to the floor, wall or your child’s plastic toys and let them peel it off. Window clings for sliding glass doors, refrigerator magnets, price tag stickers on toys, labels on Amazon delivery boxes – the list goes on and on…
Stretch and Slide Play
In your Kinder Club Kit, you should have a piece of blue foam (it’s a piece of a pool noodle) and a little bag of round stretchy things. Do you know what the stretchy things are called? That’s right! They are rubber bands. What could you do with them? Those are great ideas. Today, we are going to use the rubber bands to help strengthen your finger muscles by stretching the rubber bands and slipping them over and around the pool noodle. How many rubber bands can you fit on your pool noodle?
What else did you find in your Kinder Club Kit? I was hoping you would say a piece of cardboard and some colorful paper clips because… you are going to make some paper clip worms! Remove all your paper clips from your piece of cardboard. How many paper clips do you have? What colors are the paper clips? Now, place your paper clips on your cardboard worm. You can slide them on by color, cardboard side, or even size if you have smaller paper clips around the house to add to the ones we gave you. To turn this activity into a game, grab that dice you used earlier. Roll the dice and add that many paper clips to your cardboard worm.
Bonus Activity: Popper Play
Your Kinder Club Kit includes a popper fidget toy. What shape is your popper? What color is your popper? Fidget toys like these are another simple fun way to strengthen your finger muscles. Try popping the bubbles with different fingers. Which finger was the easiest to use to pop the bubbles? Which finger was the hardest to use to get the bubbles to pop?
Other ways to play with your popper toy:
- Use your tweezers to add pom poms or beads to your popper
- Use your tweezers to remove pom poms or beads from your popper
- Use an eye dropper or pipette to add water to your popper
- Use a marker to write letters/numbers on the popper, then pop the bubbles for your name or phone number
Thank you for visiting the Kinder Club blog today! Visit the library’s calendar of events at westlakelibrary.org/events to find more literacy and children’s programming opportunities.
