DIY Pokey Pinning Boards

Do your kidlets pokey pin?  Mine do!  I love this simple activity for really working out those hand muscles (so important for writing stamina) and improving fine motor control.  It's simple to do, you just need a few thumbtacks and a dotted outline.  Kidlets poke their pin through each dot on the outline.  Easy peasy!  The only tricky thing is finding a safe base for them to pin into.  Some people suggest using the carpet, but having the pins on the floor worries me.  So I grabbed a few cheap bits'n'bobs and made my own boards that have the added benefit of holding the paper in place.

You'll need some wooden clipboards, cork placemats (mine were from Ikea - $3.99 for a pack of 4) and some glue.

I bet you can see where I'm going with this. :) All you need to do is cover the board with glue and pop the placemat on top.

The placemats are larger than the board, so once the glue is dry just cut off the excess.  I tried a craft knife and it made a bit of a mess of the cork.  Scissors worked much better!

There you have it! A sturdy, safe board for your kidlets to pokey pin away.  If you're looking for some templates to use, Mel From the Pond has lots of packs in her store.  I love Tracing and Pinning All Year Round because I alternate pokey pinning with tracing in my fine motor groups, but she has heaps of packs to choose from including sight words, shapes and the alphabet.

Linking up with Tara for Monday Made It - pop over and see the other inspiring DIY projects. :)

Happy pokey pinning!

Monday Made It! A fun fine motor idea.

I always feel so accomplished when I've made something worthy of linking up with Tara for Monday Made It!  Today I'm sharing a super simple but very fun idea to use as a fine motor activity.

You've probably seen these little guys on Pinterest - I'm not sure what their official title is, but in my classroom we call them 'Mike'. Not sure why, probably because they kind of look like the green fella from Monsters Inc.  My Mikes needed some TLC these holidays, and one had disappeared completely so I figured as I was making another I should share the process with you!

You'll need some cheap tennis balls, googly eyes, a craft blade (here we call them Stanley knives, but you might have an X-Acto) and super glue.  I've tried PVA in the past, but without fail I end up having to re-glue after a while so super glue is better value for money!

Use the knife to cut an opening in the tennis ball - about 2 inches long.  Please be careful! Make sure you have the tennis ball on a hard surface so it won't move, and be sure to cut super slowly so the knife doesn't slip.  

Glue the googly eyes on - whichever glue you're using might soak into the furry fabric part of the tennis ball before it sets so make sure you glue on top of the rubber strip.

That's it!  Now you have your very own Mike to use in fine motor activities.  Kidlets squeeze the mouth open to feed him... well, anything! Pom poms, beads, dry beans - anything you have.  This activity really works the hand muscles of little ones so can already be tricky, but to increase the difficulty you can have them use tweezers to feed Mike. 

Well, that's one project done! I think it might be time to scroll through Instagram to check out the #bloghoppin2014 Scavenger Hunt fun, as well as all the pics from Vegas that have been making me so jealous. :)

Monday Made It - Felt Button Chains and Sight Word Treasure!

I'm either reallllly late to February Made It, or super early to the March edition.  Either way I told myself I wasn't allowed to have any ice-cream tonight until I came by to share a few projects I worked on this past weekend!  So here we go. :)

First up is a colourful fine motor activity that I saw on Pinterest (pinned from here).  I was totally shocked last week when one of my kidlets couldn't do the buttons on her shirt up herself!  A quick survey of the class told me that I needed to get onto making these Felt Button Chains quick smart.  

All you need is some felt (I bought mine from the dollar store in an A4 sized pieces for $1 each), some buttons (a craft pack from Spotlight) and some wool (I used an upholstery needle so the wool would fit through the eye).

Cut the felt into strips and sew a button on one end.  I only did one stitch and then tied the wool off - there won't be room in the button holes for much more!  Make a cut in the other end as a button hole - leave a decent amount of felt between the hole and the edge just in case enthusiastic kidlets rip it a little as they are buttoning!

There you have it - DIY Felt Chains for fine motor practice. :)

I added them to our rotations this morning and they were a hit! Quiet, calming and great for those little finger muscles.  We just need a little work on linking them together properly. :)

My second project was inspired by another pin that led me to Carolyn's blog - Holding Hands and Sticking Together.  I get so many wonderful ideas from Carolyn and this one was no exception.  My Sight Word treasure took no time at all to make.  All you need are some rocks (mine were river stones from Bunnings) some gold spray paint and a marker.

I'm using these tomorrow in my Literacy groups - the kidlets are going to dig for treasure and write the words that they find on each gold nugget on a simple recording sheet.  

Link up with 4th Grade Frolics to share your crafty projects, too.  Right, job done... ice cream for me! :)

Lauren

Monday Made It!

I've always wanted to link up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for a 'Monday Made It', but because I'm not super crafty I usually feel like my DIY projects will be embarrassed to be linked up with all the other wonderful made its. :) I'm sharing this one because it was super duper easy, and I know it could be a cheap-n-cheerful resource for other classrooms.

With a bread knife and some pool noodles, it didn't take me long to make a whole heap of these giant, soft beads! So far I've just used them during Discovery Play time and as part of our fine motor activities, but I've got plans to use them for patterning and addition/subtraction.  For lots of my kidlets threading these babies will be much more exciting than moving counters around, and because they will be laced together it will be easy to see and count each colour and the total.  (Don't you hate it when simple number stories aren't solved properly because a wriggly body has knocked a counter into hiding?)

I used 6 noodles in 2 different colours and some thin rope that I found in the storeroom (you could buy something similar quite cheaply from the hardware store). I taped a popstick to one end of each piece of rope to stop the beads sliding off and also popped a bit of tape on the loose end to stop the rope fraying.

There you have it folks, the easiest DIY ever!  Let me know if you found this idea useful. :)

Lauren