When developing curriculum, daycare providers must include age-appropriate activities for young children that develop cognitive skills and fine motor skills. This pipe cleaner and matching activity will support learning colors units as well as promote visual motor coordination and hand strength.
Fine Motor Skills
Fine motor skills are actions that involve the small movement of hands, wrists, feet, fingers, toes, tongue, and lips. In contrast with gross motor skills which involve larger muscles of the arms, legs and feet, fine motor skills focus on small muscle movements in coordination with the eye. Some important fine motor concepts and skills that preschool age children learn to master are bilateral coordination, visual motor coordination, grasp, hand use, manipulation skills, pincer grasp, wrist rotation, pre-writing grasp, hand strength, and tactile awareness.
Cognitive Development
Cognitive development focuses on developing functions of the brain such as thinking, learning, awareness, judgment, and processing information. According to developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, children go through several stages of cognitive development and learning activities for toddlers and children should correspond to the appropriate developmental.
This pipe cleaner stringing and color matching activity includes the preparation instructions, procedures, and materials list for this activity. It also provides age-appropriate learning objectives and a sample of the simple supporting verbal cues necessary to encourage participation and support learning in your daycare center. Please see precautions below:
Materials
For each child you will need:
- Colored Pipe cleaners
- Large Colored Buttons
- Container to hold the buttons
Clothespin Letter Matching Preparation
- Set out the clothes
- Write each of the letters of the alphabet (either in all caps or all lower case) around the outside edge of the circle.
- Write the each of the letters of the alphabet on the 26 clothespins.
- Put all of the materials on the activity table.
Clothespin Letter Matching Instructions
Invite the children over to the activity area and explain that you will be doing a color matching activity. Show children to select one of the buttons and then show them how to slide the button onto the correct pipe cleaner. Encourage children to correctly match the remaining buttons to fill the pipe cleaners.
Learning Objectives and Verbal Cutes
Objective 1: To provide the opportunity for increased visual-motor coordination, bilateral coordination, hand strength, and pincher grasp by stringing the buttons on to the pipe cleaners.
Verbal Cue A: Can you slide the red button onto the red pipe cleaner?
Verbal Cue B: Can string the button on the pipe cleaner?
Objective 2: To foster color recognition skills and matching skills
Verbal Cue A: what colors it the button you are holding?
Verbal Cue B: Can you find the pipe cleaner that is the same color as that button?
Caution: Children age 1 to 3 are most like to swallow or breathe in a foreign object, like buttons. Please be sure that the children who are doing this activity are developmentally ready to handle buttons and always supervise closely.
Image Courtesy StarsTraining.org
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