Fine Motor/Sensory/Writing Activities...
We really love the wooden pieces of our Handwriting Without Tears program, and not just to form letters! Smiley loves using the pieces as ramps for his cars, as bridges, or ladders for his fire truck :)
We did also use them to build a gigantic E, F, and L though ;)
We sorted fall leaves by color. This was really an activity for the tot, but Smiley liked to participate for a little while...
Making patterns...
Later that week, I let the kids play with corn kernels. They LOVED it! All they needed were a few buckets, spoons and their trucks...
Additional crafts included bats and pumpkins :) I love fall!
Everything else...
Reading continues to go really well. Smiley loves to read his little readers (hooked on phonics- K). He also played ABC Reading Eggs on the computer once or twice this week. It's great practice to reinforce sounding out and practicing his sight words.
Math just continues to be an everyday occurrence around here. Smiley is often counting something, adding, or subtracting. The singapore math textbook I purchased isn't really working for us right now. The concepts are too easy, and he isn't interested in writing numerals yet. So, for now we're just continuing with our everyday hands-on math :) Eventually, I would like to either purchase Montessori Math materials or Right Start materials. We'll see...
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When did you start Handwriting w/o Tears? My little boy is about a year younger than yours-- and he's not doing much beyond circles and lines. I know every child is different-- but just wanting a general idea... oh and we have those leaves and also did some patterning with them recently. They're great for early math! :)
ReplyDeleteAmanda- we started in September when Smiley was 3.5 years old. Most boys are a bit later to develop handwriting skills (compared to girls). I would say, around 4 years might be a good time to do actual letters. Smiley still isn't very interested in it... I would focus a lot on developing fine motor skills through playful activities, such as finger paint, play dough, cutting, gluing, legos, sensory bins etc. Around age 3, he might also be able to start tracing lines, both vertical and horizontal... In terms of handwriting, Smiley much prefers to write in shaving cream, yogurt or pudding, to trace sandpaper letters, or to write with finger paint, then to actually write letters in a workbook... So, those things might be something your little one might enjoy as well. I would rather wait until he's ready and breeze through it, rather than it being a big chore by doing it too early ;)
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