Using Our Muscles

  

Many people don't realize that strong finger and hand muscles are one of the most important parts of preparing young children to be writers. Strong hands enable children to do the extended writing tasks of the elementary school years. Time spent in developing these hand and finger muscles reward us with coordinated movements.Today the Shemesh children showed their hand and finger strength as they picked corn kernels off of colorful cobs of dried corn. Vika demonstrated, "You use your fingers like this! It's hard!" Rose watched, and then used her thumb to carefully push the kernel from it's spot on the cob. Grayden and Vika were on a mission to finish the whole cob! What dedication!

Duplo explorations

We saw the children working diligently with the duplo blocks, animals, and vehicles.  It was fun to see the different ways they used them.  Fitting together the blocks, snapping vehicle hitches together, and bending the little figures all require fine motor skills, including finger and grip strength.  These are precursors to writing.  So many aspects of play contribute to abilities down the road!

Applesauce

The children enjoyed peeling and cutting apples as they made applesauce. They sliced and diced the apples, added a few raisins ,a bit of cinnamon and ta-da...delicious applesauce!

Creating insects with playdough...

The children spent a lot of time creating bugs and insects with pipe cleaners and playdough! Adam made a rainbow worm, Micah G. a cockroach and spider, Molly an ant and Charlotte made beetle. All week we have been changing the materials at the playdough/insect table...challenges the children's fine motor skills! Keeps the activity fun and interesting too!

What kind of matzah do you like?

The Tel Aviv children had the opportunity to try matzah with honey, butter, jelly, cream cheese or just plain old matzah.  Everyone had a great time tasting, chatting, and spreading the toppings on to the matzah.

When the children were finished eating they signed their name on the  "What kind of matzah do you like?"  graph.  The two most favorite toppings are jelly and cream cheese!

Sanding the Rough Edges

Today, the children sawed more wood and some of them decided to  use sandpaper blocks to smooth out the rough edges of the wood. Mittens became work gloves and work resumed. 

Jared is pointing to  his plan  so that he will know how long to make his next piece of wood.

Nathan notices that "The wood is getting on the sanding paper " and he looks at the white residue on the sand paper.

Max noted that there were "little pieces of wood. It's turning yellow cause I'm scratching the wood. "

Molly said,"It's getting smaller and smoother with sanding." The students continue to be excited to work on their  projects and wait patiently until it is their turn to work. Next time, some of the students will start to hammer!

The Snowy Day

Despite the late start and a smaller number of friends in school today, there was no shortage of activities going on in the Keshet class today.  Ethan and Harrison brought in their new SteveSongs CD which provided our beautiful background music.

 The children built towers with the magnetiles...

...Made necklaces with the cheerios,

 

...and even helped prepare our snack by peeling clementines with a special visitor.

We ended the day by going down to the community room and playing with the Levana class.  Not bad for a short day!   We look forward to seeing everyone on Thursday.

The Sawing Begins

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The children in the Kohavim/Hafia lunchbox began their woodworking projects. They looked at their plans and calculated where to draw their cutting line on the wood. Students had the  opportunity to practice turn taking with the saw and Drew  lined up chairs so that there was a safe place for students to watch  the activity.  Next week, we will continue to saw the wood and begin to sand the rough edges.

Woodworking Expose

During the past few weeks, the students have been talking about a woodworking project. Last Friday we began the project by using  paper strips to replicate  wood pieces and make our plans. The children cut and ripped the strips to construct  their ideas.The students wanted to take home their work but were reminded that they need their building plans. Look for further updates on our progress!

Molly said,"I 'm making a triangle, a square, and a rectangle."

Drew built a "birdhouse."

Max used a "triangle,long chimney, and a square." to construct a house.

Brett Stone made a "birdhouse in a rectangle."

Sam G. constructed a "high building."

Jarred made a "birdhouse" with rectangles.

Brave Queen Esther

At our morning meeting we had in depth discussion about heroes and who the heroes are in the Purim story and why.  When we opened the classroom for free play we invited the children to create crowns with scissors, paper, markers, tape and sequins.

Queen Esther seemed to be be very popular!  The children took their time as they traced, cut and decorated their crown.  Tomorrow we will have the opportunity to make more crowns.  Next week we will play with the crowns in our dramatic play center.

It's Purim...Guess who?

 

Fine Motor Development

Too many people think fine motor development only means the way a child holds and uses pencils, crayons, and scissors.  But fine motor development is much more.  To understand fine motor development it is important to understand a little about how the human body develops.

Human development progresses from the head down and from the trunk outward.  The torso and shoulders develop long before the elbow, the hips, long before the knees, and so on.  In other words, skilled use of one's hands and fingers is the last in a long process of development.

Fine motor development is enhanced early in life by many opportunities to develop and refine large motor skills.  It is developed by giving young children big pieces of paper and crayons, allowing them to practice their movements.  We also help children's fine motor development through a variety of activities, such as working with play dough, constructing with legos, stringing beads, painting, doing puzzles, and playing with pegboards and other table toys.

Such engrossing activities are better than tasks at which the child may "fail" or those that are very repetitive.  Through these fun, natural activities, children improve their fine motor development without frustration or boredom.

The Tel Aviv children really enjoy playing with playdough, stringing beads of all shapes and sizes, and doing puzzles. Lately they have spent a lot of time painting at the tables with thin brushes, at the easel with thick brushes and with eye droppers and liquid water colors at the rectangular table. All great fun activities which are helping to strengthen and develop the muscles in their hands and fingers.

Is it Chanukah fun or Muscle Building?

 Yes, it's both.  We used craft sticks and white glue to make a menorah as we begin to prepare for Chanukah.  The process of applying glue from the squeeze bottle requires eye hand coordination to place the glue on the stick, muscle strength in the fingers and hands to grip and squeeze the bottle.  This offers the Keshet kids an opportunity for fun AND the development of pre-writing skills.

The wedge and lever...

The wedge and the lever help focus our energy to make work easier. Micah and Noah found it was easier to pry the golf tees out of the styrofoam with the spoons. But Micah had a better, "The spoons breaks when you take out the tees. You can use the hook part of the hammer, that works better and it does not break." Micah showed Noah how to pry the tees out with the hook side of the hammer. Noah took his time and proceeded to remove all the tees from his piece of styrofoam. Each time he pryed out a tee he said, "Look another one!" The children figured out first hand, the hammer allows us to push the golf tee into the styrofoam easier than by hand alone, the spoon enables us to pry them out, which is difficult by finger strength alone.

Gooey Stuff

What happens when you mix together equal parts liquid starch and glue? Slime, of course!  We made several varieties of slime. At first we used clear glue, then white glue. In some of the batches we added water color paint. No matter what kind we made it was super slippery and gooey.  It can be stretched  it out, if you do it slowly. Sometimes if you pull it quickly, it will snap into two pieces. Children enjoy handling these kinds of sensory materials because there is really no right or wrong way to play with them.  Using small hands to manipulate the slime strengthens finger and hand muscles in preparation for drawing, writing and cutting.

Decorating our Sukkah

Noah, Zack, and Ryan used droppers as they experimented
mixing water colors in palettes. They used their mixed water colors
and droppers to dye the leaves.

Once the paper leaves had dried, we used hole punchers
to string the leaves. Molly strings the paper leaves with beads to make
decorations for the sukkah we constructed.

The children deocrated the sukkah they constrcuted by hanging the paper leaves. Max and Max

hang the decorations from the top of the sukkah. Using droppers to mix colors and dye the leaves, punching holes with a hole puncher, stringing beads, and tying knots to hang the decorations are all activities that required both fine motor strength and control. When you get a chance, come see our beautiful sukkah which was built and decorated by the Kohavim children!

Exploring and Creating!

At each child's work space, there were q-tips, paint, and a brown marker.   I told the children we were going to use these materials to create trees you might see during the fall season.

It was interesting to watch as some of the children picked up the brown marker right away and started drawing lines, swirls, and rectangles, which they called the trunk and branches of the tree.

After they created the trunk and branches they started dipping the q-tips in the yellow, green, and orange paint.   Once they had enough paint on the tip of the q-tip they created colorful leaves.   Josie placed the q-tip on the little lines she called the branches and rubbed the q-tip in a circular motion.   Zach dipped his q-tip in the paint and placed the q-tip on his paper, then he quickly pulled it up away from his paper and then placed it down again.  He continued moving the moist q-tip up and down, over and over again.

When the children felt finished with their painting, they laid it on the sensory table to dry.   We displayed them in our classroom today.   When you get chance come in and see your child's colorful, bright fall trees! 

Spending Time in the Community Room!

We decorated visors, played on the sit-and-spins toys, created structures with blocks and magnetiles, worked on puzzles together, read books, enjoyed a cold juice pop, played with pipe cleaners and buttons and danced the day away!

Creating with Fruit!

Building structures with toothpicks and grapes was quite treat! One grape went into their mouth and the next grape they attached to their creation. Eli and Eliza built a radio tower and Hannah built a playground.

The children also had the opportunity to make jewelry by stringing grapes, blueberries and strawberries with a real needle. Molly spent a lot of time creating a colorful tasty necklace!

Fun with Playdough

We have been playing with blue playdough this week! The children have been working with the playdough independently and cooperatively. We used our hands to flatten the playdough and used pizza cutters and cookies cutters to shape and manipulate the playdough.  Playdough provides a sensory experience, inspires imaginative play,  and offers an opportunity to strengthen hand muscles and develop fine motor skills.  

Ilan rolled the playdough into small balls. He held up one of the speheres and exclaimed, "A train wheel!"

 Sophie, Audrey, and Rose prepared pizza with the playdough. Rose said, "I'm flattening mine! I'm putting mac and cheese." Sophie explained she was making a tomato pizza. They put the pizzas into the pretend oven and decided it would take three hours to bake.  As the pizzas baked, the children used paper and markers to color. Then with a huge smile, Audrey said, "It's ready!"