Preparing for School – Recipes for fine motor play at home
This weeks focus for helping your prepare your child for starting school in our Getting Ready for K through play series is all about fine motor skills and writing. As the youngest in the year J who is going to be going into year 1 in September has had working on fine motor skills as a target throughout the year so today focus is something that I have spent a lot of time talking to his teacher about.
We’ve been using different activities at home to help him and a lot of them have been homemade play recipes that help him manipulate different materials. Here’s our 4 favourite recipes.
Play dough
We always have some play dough around the house – I use my mum’s old recipe which I am yet to write up but the nearest to it is Anna’s from The Imagination Tree (just not cream of tartar in my mum’s which means it doesn’t last as long). At school J has been doing a play dough disco – to music and the beat moving the play dough between his hands, squishing it stretching it and twisting it.
Silly Putty
Much more resistance than play dough silly putty stretches further and helps develop those fine motor muscles further than play dough – we’ve been buying it from the pound shop but Coffee Cups and Crayons has a recipe that now I have found some liquid starch and will be trying this over the summer.
Gloop/Ooobleck
A fantastic material that seems to defy the laws of physics – changing from liquid to solid in your hand and then liquid again with no melting – really easy to make just 2 ingredients.
Air Drying Clay
Again like silly putty this has more resistance than silly putty but you can create statues with it – I have a recipe in an old magazine that we have used and the closest that I have found on the net to it is this one from Southern as Biscuits which is a homemade model magic recipe.
Getting ready for K through play
This weeks focus of the 6 week series this year is on fine motor and writing skills – check back to see other fun and playful ways that we are preparing for school this year – we produced visual timetables to help support children emotionally starting school, played the inside out, back to front, wrong foot game getting kids prepared independently get ready for school, we played a number gross motor game reviewing our numbers and then wrote letters in the sky.
Check out the other great fine motor activities that people are sharing this week.
Handwriting activities and centres – Mom to 2 posh Lil Divas
Kindergarten readiness fine motor skills – Mama Smiles
Fine Motor Busy Bags – Coffee Cups and Crayons
Fun ways to practice writing letters – The pleasantest Thing
Fine motor skills handwriting practice – Mess for Less
Cerys Parker
Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.