Bouncy balls. Gotta love em. They come in all sizes, and as their name suggests, boy are they bouncy. They are very engaging to kids and they are fun in so many ways I love this activity because you can be so concrete with your directions. Hold the blue ball with your finger and thumb.[Read More]
in hand manipulation skills
Big mouth creature for feeding pom poms to
You can put manipulatives into any container, but when you make the container into a creature that is hungry, it makes it so much more fun to do the work. I saw this cute little creature on Pinterest, but it originally came from a blog called The Preschool Experiment. He was so easy to make,[Read More]
Chopsticks
Mature and refined grasp patterns, as well as in hand manipulation, require use of the small finger muscles, and they use the two sides of the hands separately. It can be challenging learning how to coordinate the pinky finger side of the hand separately from the index finger side of the hand. Similar movements are[Read More]
In hand manipulation skills using broken crayons
In order to work on in-hand manipulation skills with some kids, I decided to use little pieces of broken off crayon. I had them hold two crayons at the same time, one in their palm, and one in their fingers. Then I had them draw a shape (I had circles and rainbows) with one color,[Read More]
Balancing Bugs on a Leaf for Fine Motor
Here is a cute little activity that combines in hand manipulation with fine motor control to place objects in just the right place. I made some leaves, printed them on cardstock, and laminated them to give them more strength. Then I balanced the leaf on a little cube. It is like the leaf is floating[Read More]