Talking Scissors
Put a pair of scissors on your hand and have the child put a pair on his hand.
Open and close your scissors in a certain pattern and ask the child to imitate/repeat what your scissors “said” using his scissors.
Skill: Finger Strength
Having enough power in the small hand muscles to do things like open a lunchbox, squeeze a glue bottle, or hold a pencil without getting tired.
Strengthening Clothespins
For this activity, you will need colored clothespins in 4 different colors or if you have wooden clothespins you can color them or mark them with 4 colors.
The colors should match the color of the construction paper.
Cover the containers with construction paper. Let the child choose a color and then roll the dice.
The child is then asked to place the clothespins on the edge of the matching colored container.
If the dice rolled 1, have the child place 1 clothespin on the edge of the container. If the dice rolled 2, use 2 clothespins. Etc.
This activity can also be done in a group as part of a game where each child has 1 container and is playing to get as many clothespins on his container in an allotted time.
Your Very Own Fish Tank
For this activity, you need to use blue, orange, and yellow construction paper. You would also need to use a single hole puncher.
On a piece of blue construction paper, draw a square (in a size that will fit inside the ziplock bag) with wiggly lines. Ask the child to cut the square that you drew and stay within the wiggly lines (thickness of the line depends on the child’s skills and development).
Draw a fish on the orange or yellow paper and have the child cut it out. Depending on the child’s skills, you can have the child trace a picture of a fish or draw his own fish.
Glue the fish onto the blue sheet. Ask the child to draw eyes, fins, gills, and mouth on the fish and add any plants on the blue paper. Use a hole punch to punch bubbles in the blue paper (coming out of the mouth of the fish and above). Place the blue sheet into the ziplock bag. Place the oats on the table or in a small shallow plate and ask the child to pinch the oats and drop into the bag, to represent the floor of the tank. Repeat this activity a few times, until there is enough oats on the bottom of the bag. Seal the bag nice and tight.
TP Roll Snake
Pull open the TP roll all the way.
Provide the child with paint and a brush and instruct him to paint it. You can also choose markers or crayons to color the snake.
Once dry, you can have the child use Q-tips to paint the snake, or crumble little pieces of tissue paper, and/or use stickers.
Depending on the child developmental skills, either cut a snake’s tongue out of red construction paper or have him cut it himself.
Finally, the child can glue the tongue and the wiggly eyes on one end of the TP roll. If you don’t have wiggly eyes in hand, you can use small buttons.
Mixed Clothespins
For this activity, you will need to use 4 different colored clothespins.
Use the markers or crayons to paint each edge of the cardboard in one color.
Mix the clothespins.
Instruct the child to order the clothespins by matching the edge color to the clothespin color. The child should be using a different finger for each clothespin color (i.e., thumb and index finger for a yellow clothespin, thumb and middle finger for a red clothespin, thumb and ring finger for a green clothespin, and thumb and pinky finger for green clothespin).
For grading place all mixed clothespins on the cardboard and ask the child to pick them up and re-attach it to the right edge.