Fine Motor Development!

"My son is very clever in finding ways to avoid the arts and crafts at preschool, but he is great with blocks and Legos." Does this sound familiar?

Young boys are more apt to avoid fine motor and arts and crafts activities at school than girls. The reason for this is twofold; their fine motor and visual motor skills usually develop later than girls' and they are generally more interested in construction and active play. Other reasons children avoid these activities are sensitivities to messy materials such as glue, difficulty with such activities because of immature bilateral(use of both hands together) skills for cutting and project assembly, disinterest, or fear of failure.

What To Do!

Be clever and embed these activities into other preferred play(e.g., making and cutting out stop signs for the race track, or making save signs for the save self,creating costumes for Drama Stories, making tickets for a trip to Israel).

Today I noticed that Teddy F and Ruby were coloring their finger nails/hands with markers and I asked them what they were doing. They told me they were pretending to be Vampires. Ruby then said " Don't my hands look cool?" I said, "Yes they do!" I took a few moments to observe the detailed art on their hands. Then I saw some other children decorating their hands(Mia, Sam, Hadley, Isaiah, Eric, Josh and Oliver). I walked over to Sam to check out his colorful hands and he said, "Hey Lauri look, blue and yellow make green! "I went over to the other side of the classroom and pointed out to Melissa that this is a very clever way to get the children who don't consistently take part in fine motor activities to paint, draw, and write. The children did not want to put the markers away at the end of the day. When it was time for our special Passover snack, everyone washed the "marker art" off their hands. Melissa and I made it clear that they could only draw on their hands at school if they asked a teacher first. I went on to explain that the rules at home might be different, so they need to ask a parent first, if they wanted to draw on anything other than paper at home.