Pipe Cleaner Activity for Little Busy Hands

As I mentioned in my previous post we are set out with series of fine motor activities that would keep your little ones' little hands busy for hours. And this Pipe Cleaner activity is a perfect one. Chenille stems, or the pipe cleaners, can be bent into any shape and are thin enough to string beads too. I love them because they come in different colors and even glitter, sparkly pipe cleaners are available and fairly inexpensive.

This activity is so simple to set up, all you need is pipe cleaners and a colander. 

Turn your colander upside down and show your kiddo how to insert the pipe cleaners into the holes of the colander. 

LO was very curious in taking out a new pipe cleaner out of the pack than inserting them in the colander😁

 

LO loved the versatility of the pipe cleaners and its soft texture. He loved bending them into different shapes. He associated each color with an animal and he had his own story for each of them😁

 

 We also tried pulling the pipe cleaners out of the colander.

And finally cleanup!!

It was a complete fun filled fine motor activity with learning the colors and some imaginative play. 

Happy Parenting!😊

Busy Hands : Alphabet Fine Motor Play

Super excited to write the first post on "Busy Hands Series". In this series we will concentrate on fine motor activities for toddlers and preschoolers. Important caution: Materials used or suggested in this series may include small items and children are most likely to choke on small objects when they're between 6 months and 3 years old. Hence adult supervision is required all the time when doing these kinda activities with your kids.

The importance of fine motor skill is a well known fact and I need not discuss about that in this space. And remember 'Every child is different', and they develop differently.

This activity was initiated by LO and I just clicked the photos. You need a foam alphabet puzzle and grab some pile of whatever you have to fill the letters. We used red beans but you could use beads, dry split beans, corn kernels, dry beans or any other small item.

You can use this activity to practice letter recognition. You can call out a letter and ask your preschooler to fill the letter with beads/ beans.

Fine motor skills aid in the growth of intelligence and develop continuously throughout the stages in human development.

Happy Parenting😊

Mommy and Mee - Animals and their Young ones Free Play

This (activity) is an unplanned one from my LO👦. As always he was playing with animals, and I was busy doing my chores. He was chatting with animals and busy arranging them on the whizzy dizzy toy. LO imagines the whizzy dizzy to be the forest, as it is green in color😁. After sometime he asked me something and to my surprise I noticed, he had paired the animals as 'mommy and baby'!!😍. I was blissed out about his idea, and what else, immediately I grabbed my camera and started to click snap (just for you guys!😉)

I have come across the importance of free play for kids, but then I realized how creative, fresh and imaginative it could be!😊 I just wanted to share the pictures, so I am not gonna talk about the supplies needed nor how we did it! And of course its just a free play! 

He imagined the brown beans to be the water and let the duck and dolphin swim! You can also use this play to teach them the animals and their young ones. But I didn't do, since I didn't want to pester him! But let's have a look at the young ones' names. 

Dolphin and its Pup/Calf.

Duck and its Duckling, Spider and its Spiderling.

Bear and its Cub.

Lion and its Cub, Grasshopper and its Nymph, Praying Mantis and its Nymph, Fox and its Cub/ Pup.

Sheep and its Lamb, Goat and its Kid, Dog and its Pup, Cat and its Kitten.

Zebra and its Colt/Foal, Tiger and its Cub, Dino and its Juvenile, Cheetah and its Cub.

Horse and its Foal, Frog and its Froglet.

This free play kept LO busy for hours. He had so much fun arranging them in the forest!

Its important for the kids to have these kinda imaginative free play, which allows them to use their creativity and develop their imagination and other strengths. Share the interesting stories of your kids free play with us in the comment box.

Happy Parenting!😊

Animals and Habitats - Sorting activity for Pre-Schoolers

The previous activities on Animal sorting and Old Mac Donald farm were a big hit with LO, so I thought to do one more sorting activity using the animals🐄🐅🐙🐢🐧🐨We had a collection of sea animals, insects and jungle animals, and LO sorts the animals into two or three categories based on his own designed criteria! So I thought let's do an animal sorting based on their habitats. By this I can introduce him to the habitat's terms and based animal sorting. 

How do we assemble:

Get your construction papers, I used five different colors for five different habitats, markers, crayons, glue, scissors and the animal toys.

Decide which habitats to include in the activity game. I decided on Sea, Farm, Forest, Polar Region and Wet Lands. See to that at least you have two animals in the decided category.

Start to create the habitat mats using the construction paper. I loved doing this. We used markers and crayons. LO helped me to glue the labels and color the habitats. 

LO loved the habitat mats! He was happy that he contributed in creating them. If you love the mats you created sooo much, you can even laminate them and have it forever!!

And its all done! Its time for some learning cloaked as a game!😁

To make it simple I told him that most of the amphibian animals are found in the wet lands. The term "Wet Land" was new to him. 

And added "The Polar bear is found in the Polar region". All these days we categorized seal as an sea animal, and to convince him to put the seal in the Polar region was the hardest part. And some how he agreed to it finally!

He was comfortable in sorting the other categories namely, the Farm animals, Forest animals and Sea animals. You can have one more category as Jungle, but truly I was bit confused in sorting the animals between jungle and forest!

We also talked about the Habitats, like the Forest has lot of trees, the Polar region would be full of snow, the Wet lands would be marshy kinda, and the Farm is owned by Old Mac Donald😁😀😀

Try this simple easy peasy activity and use this game as an ice breaker to teach your kids about the science facts. I am sure they would love to learn all these new facts.

Happy Parenting! 😊

Old Mac Donald Farm - Sensory Pretend Play

The next idea I'm gonna add to the 'animals' series is the Old MacDonald Farm pretend play with sensory touch. As I mentioned earlier, this season LO is crazy about animals. Every day he plays with animals, and not at all bored! I wonder, how come he isn't feeling bored? So I thought let's do some pretend play, with the animals in hand. So ended up in doing Old MacDonald Farm setup. This is an easy and fun sensory play for children.

We didn't have any large sized sensory tub, so just used cardboard as a base. We gathered all  the materials, and started to setup. At the beginning LO didn't get the idea about what I'm doing. He was bit not happy with me doing the setup and using his toys😛 But finally when it was done, he was so excited, and gave me ideas to fine tune it and helped me in completing it

Lacing Shapes Beads - Activity for Toddlers

This is a fine motor activity you can do with your toddler and preschooler, to enhance their threading skill and of course, its so much fun! Threading activities are nice when you are looking for some quite time. Even the busiest child can calm down and focus as they do this fun filled threading activity. 

This time me and LO tried lacing a caterpillar 🐛with some shapes beads made out of plastic, and with the pipe cleaner. I know LO is still not comfortable lacing with string. Using a pipe cleaner to thread onto is a good idea for beginners, as it is easier to hold and retains its shape during lacing. They can be twisted into any shape and its easy to secure them at the ends. 

We had these plastic shapes beads which my sister 👸😍bought for LO. The beads are of all colors and shapes.

Make a loose knot at the other end of pipe cleaner, so that will keep the beads from sliding off and prevents lot of frustration!

I told LO, let's make a caterpillar 🐛with these shapes and he got so excited. LO got fully involved into it and it was so much fun.

Lace the beads on to the pipe cleaner.

And we are lacing a "caterpillar" 🐛actually! And LO was smart enough to take care that no two beads of same color are put together! 

And the caterpillar is ready to eat and eventually build a cocoon!!😊🍃🐛

This activity enhances their fine motor control, hand eye co-ordination, pincer grasp, concentration and making new creations from combined materials. Try this lacing activity with any kinda beads available with you and share your comments.

Happy Parenting😊

Sort Animals based on their Diet - Activity for PreSchoolers

We are back with one more animals activity. This time we classified animals based on the specific food animals specialize in eating : Herbivore, Carnivore and Omnivore. I think this is the right time to introduce science facts for Preschoolers. The hands on aspect of this activity is great for budding young learners and can encourage later imaginative play as well.

Very simple activity, to start with gather your materials. You will need construction papers (colors of your choice), black marker and mix of animal figurines. LO already knows some of the animals in each category, but this time I thought lets do a detailed sorting making use of most of the animals with him. 

Write the categories in the white strips. I asked LO to glue each one of them on three different construction sheets, and all set to play!! 

Initially LO sorted few animals that he is aware of, and for the rest he sought my help.

As LO was sorting, I made a list of the animals, category wise with his help.

Later we did a detailed sorting with rest of the animals.

Stick this white paper on kid's wall, so that they can look at it and get familiarized with the animals' type of diet.

Happy Parenting!

Magazine Cut Animals Collage

This collage is effortless to make, and kids would sure love it. I had few magazines and zoo's pamphlets. I was thinking to make a random magazine cut collage with LO for long time. But this time I thought, lets do an animal collage with these. So we both surfed through the magazines and pamphlets and collected these animal cut-outs. And that's it, so simple to make, but yet wonderful activity.

I helped LO in making the cutouts.

He was so excited to glue all the animals on the white paper.

 We talked about the animals' name, color, and what the animal is doing..etc amidst the activity.

Try this simple activity with your toddlers. Bigger kids can make the cut outs by themselves. You can even glue these cut outs in your kids scrap book or create an album of your own. It would seem silly to look at these albums later in life.😊

Happy Parenting!