Pre-writing Activities

I don’t want to jinx it by writing it here, but it was a PLAYGROUND DAY EVERY DAY THIS WEEK! Your children need to be outside where they can run, climb and get covered in sand. By the time 11:30 rolls around, it’s easy to tell that the children have had enough of being inside the building. I don’t ever remember having all my porch plants covered in flowers this late in the season. Another reason to be glad of the warm weather is that my furnace was turned off yesterday because of too much carbon monoxide coming out of it. It will be about 1 1/2 weeks till I have a new furnace installed. It will be a chilly house if the weather becomes cold.

This week the children had many, many activities which promote strengthening fine-motor muscles. It is important to strengthen these muscles to be successful at writing because of the amount of energy used when writing to control the hands/fingers and to master a mature pencil grip. Many of the activities that promote fine-motor muscle strength are easy to do at home. Some activities are obvious for this purpose, others need an explanation. Did you know that you have to “cross the midline” to read and write? When a child is painting or coloring and only using the left or right side of the paper, we point out the other side for them to paint/color. When making a project which requires covering the entire piece of paper, it is preparation for writing all the way across the paper.

Aluminum foil ball

Tap, Tap, Tap the foil & cover the entire paper.

Tearing paper strengthens muscles.

Pushing the paint in a zip-lock bag requires hand strength.

The leaves made with torn paper and the leaves made in zip-lock bags are seen on our bulletin board.

Squeezing clothespins is a great way to strengthen hands. Lacing activities and scrunching paper are also activities done at school and easy to do at home.

The children spent time working with individual trays of paper and scissors to work on cutting skills and proper grasp of the scissors.

All kinds of scissors based on hand size and skill level.

Individual tray of paper and scissors.

Correct way: Always hold the 'Thumb up'.

Wrong way: Do not turn the thumb to the bottom.

Balls of newspaper go into the paper bag.

The stuffed bag.

Voila! Orange paint turns it into a pumpkin.

Some of the children wanted to see where Mrs. Reiss and Mrs. Gillis work. Here they are taking a break to wave to us.