Dressing Up in September Practical Parenting

I have an article in this months' Practical Parenting all about dressing up. There's great suggestions on how to put together relatively inexpensive dress up outfits but also details on how to put together prop boxes to go with the clothes.

I've always found that 'dressing up' doesn't last too long if kids don't have something to do while they're dressed up. I always like to collect up items from around the house and source out cheap props from discount stores so that when the costumes are on, kids can pretend play too.

For a post on some fun my kids have had with extra props when dressed up as doctors, have a look here!

'Focus on' Friday: Fine Motor Skills

On Fridays from now on, I’ll be focus on specific topics relevant to the Early Years that I think are important.

Today I want to focus on fine motor skills.

I found this definition at http://k6.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/linkages/ContentLinks/links_fmskills.html and I think it sums these skills up beautifully.

"The components of fine motor skills can be considered to be:

• Grasping -eg using a crayon, pencil, brush, glue stick, beater, blocks
• Manipulating - eg playdough, clay, unifix, centicubes, paper, sewing, scissors, fingerplays
• Hand-eye co-ordination - eg writing, cutting, threading, moving a cursor, using a glue gun"

I’ve always thought of fine motor skills as having two components –

• strengthening and building up the muscles in the fingers, wrists and hands; and then
• training the brain to manipulate those muscles effectively.

These muscles develop according to how much they are used and which means it’s really important to think of ways kids can use fine motor skills everyday. Of course, the best way to do this is through fun, open-ended play.

Some play activities that are beneficial to fine motor skills are quite obvious. Like

Threading

Drawing

Painting

Gluing

Lacing

Using scissors

But there are loads of other activities that use fine motor skills too ...

Playing with plastic animals and toy cars

Playing with playdough

Digging in sand

Squelching messy goop, slime or yoghurt

Serving pretend ‘food’ with spoons and tongs

Mixing

Putting on dress up clothes

Doing puzzles

Building with small blocks

Dressing dolls

Feeding dolls and giving bottles

Pouring water

Turning the pages of a book

Singing songs that involve actions like “Where is Thumkin?”, “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”, “Open, Shut Them” and “Incy, Wincy Spider”

Doing puzzles

The best way to build fine motor skills is to practice, practice, practice and when this practice is linked in with a play scene, game or activity your child really enjoys, he won’t even realize he’s doing it.

Unfortunately, poor fine motor skills can have a devastating effect on your child’s self-esteem. The inability to write and draw along with friends or perform basic tasks like putting on jackets and doing up buttons can make a child feel terrible, I’ve seen this first hand. The best way to help a child overcome this is to get them involved in one of the play ideas above as often as you can and to find the help of an Occupational Therapist to assess your child and help him fine-tune his skills.

To get an idea of what fine motor skills are developmentally appropriate and different ages and stages, there’s a great “Fine Motor Development Chart” on the Sensory Processing Disorder website which you can look at here. The “National Childcare Accreditation Council” and “Fingergym” both have some more detailed info on fine motor skills if you’d like to read more too.

"Ways" on Wednesdays - Different Ways to Get Kids Drawing and Writing

I've decided it's time to get a little more structure and routine around here, so from now on, Wednesdays will be devoted to talking about 'ways' - ways to get certain things happening in your child's life or ways to use different materials and objects.

Today I'm looking at ways to include drawing and writing in children's play.

Drawing and writing is a great way to build on fine motor skills, eye-hand co-ordination and to get children enthusiastic about expressing themselves on paper.

Some children will happily sit down and draw for hours, relying only on their imagination and creativity. Other children are reluctant drawers and need a reason to pick up a pencil and a piece of paper.

I’ve found one of the best ways to get texta-shy kids drawing is to include pencils, pens, textas, paper and notebooks in their games.

This week I’ve put together some race sheets for my Ed. His favourite thing to do is to line his cars up in a race and talk about the order the cars have finished in. I thought a great way to get him to build on his written literacy skills would be to document the outcome of each race onto a “Race Sheet”. I set out a rough grid and he got together the coloured textas he needed to record the event.

Then he put the races together and coloured in the squares according to the order the cars finished in.



He adopted a letter code for his cars because sometimes he used two cars the same colour.

While he is technically not drawing in a creative, imaginative way, he is practicing some very basic writing skills and using his cognitive skills to record his cars in the order they race in. One of the biggest benefits is that he is just getting used to using textas and paper and recording his experiences. This will stand him in good stead for starting school next year.

There are other great benfits in this play too. He is:

Learning about ordinal numbers (eg. first, second, third)
Problem solving (eg. what to do when 2 cars have the same colour)
Documenting patterns
Using basic graphing skills

Here are some other great ways to include writing and drawing in play:

Encourage children to draw plans before they build with blocks

Always include a notepad and pen in dress up boxes

Cut small pieces of paper to make ‘tickets’ to include in play

Set up a post box with letters, envelopes and stamps



What creative ways do you include drawing and writing in your child’s play?

Play Moment Monday

If you look closely at where a child has been playing, you might be lucky enough to see what has really been going on. You might see something well thought out or extremely imaginative, maybe an example of caring and nurturing or something so creative and innovative it makes you laugh out loud.

When I see these things, I love to take a moment and reflect on the power and beauty of play. If I'm lucky enough to have a camera nearby, I'll take a photo too. I like to think of these photos as capturing a "Play Moment" and I've shared these on my blog many times.

Most of these moments have been play scenes or things I've discovered when packing away at the end of a long day. What may seem like a jumbled mess of random objects can be a real insight into the power of play and how a child's mind works.

Remember when Em had her "Littlest Pet Shop" toys crowded around the TV in a lounge room she had put together?




Or when Ed covered all his cars neatly in a blanket for rest time?







Or when both Em and Ed had been playing babies and had carefully thought of all the things they would need to keep the babies happy?





These moments show care and empathy and thoughtfulness at work. They also show the power of memory, organisation and an attempt to make sense of how our word works. For me, these little moments really capture why play is so lovely and important and should be valued and celebrated. Kid's are totally in the moment when they play and I don't think there's another time they are more truly themselves.

I'm devoting Mondays to sharing Play Moments and why they're valuable and important. Would you like to share your special Play Moments on Mondays too?

Just take a photo and write a post about a little play moment you've discovered that makes you go "Awwwww!" and include it in the link-up below. Don't forget to write about why it's a special moment for you. I look forward to discovering your favourite moments too ....

The Teddy Bears Are In Practical Parenting

My article in "Practical Parenting" this month is all about craft ideas to inspire dramatic play with your child's teddy. Any regular reader of my blog will know this is a subject very near and dear to my heart.

My kids both have teddy bears that they love and adore and have had since they were babies.

These teddies are the inspiration for many of their dramatic play games.

When Em was 2, I found a great way to inspire her with an art and craft project was to encourage her to make something for her Teddy, Hamley. The very first thing she made was a shoe box bed for him that we still have to this day.

Ed has followed in her footsteps making many things for his teddy Yarji.

When the magazine asked me if I had any photos of the craft projects I'd written about, I couldn't miss the opportunity to include my 2 small furry family members in the shoot.

The magazine is out until the end of the month if you wanted to check it out!

More Holiday Fun – Pictures and Movies

The other thing my kids spent ages doing while we were on holidays was making movies and taking photos.

I love the way our kids can play with video cameras and cameras today in a way we couldn’t when we were kids. With everything being digital, results can be instant and there’s no extra cost in developing or recording. We were even able to look at the kid’s work on the LCD TV in the house we were staying in that had a port for an SD card – amazing!

The kids were really fired up when they could see their work so instantly. They took a tonne of photos and put together some really nice movies too. I love that we have a record of their perspective.

Em likes to take in a whole scene

Or focus on people

Whereas Ed seems to be drawn to little things that catch his eye.

There were lots of photos of all their friends too.

Of course it wouldn't be a kid-photo-shoot be without a bit of crazy!

I love this little insight into the way their minds work.

There are lots of great benefits in this sort of play.

Taking photos builds on perspective and creativity and encourages the kids to notice what’s going on around them. It also works eye hand co-ordination and gets them planning and preparing as they work out where to put their hands, what button to press and not to cover the lens.

Making movies builds on extra skills too. At first the kids would just take random footage of their toys and what they were thinking of at the time.

As they got more into it, they started wanting to write out a plan of their movie and then practice it before they started taping. They gradually saw it as an opportunity to tell a story in their own voice.

We talked about how writing out a movie is called writing a script and how practicing it is called a rehearsal. We’re yet to edit the movies, but it’s part of the process Em is keen to be involved in. Ed is a bit young for that yet, but had a ball just putting it all together.

Holiday Fun With A Deck of Cards

We've just returned from a fabulous trip to sunny Port Douglas. It's one of my most favourite places to visit and this year we hired a house so that we could have a bit of space for just lounging around. I packed quite a few toys and things to do. I wanted the kids to be able to keep themselves busy so I could do some important things (like reading and sitting and looking at mountains and rainforest!).

One of the best things I packed (well actually, I didn't, my husband did) was a deck of cards. I spent many hours playing with cards as a kid; there are really a lot of fun things to do with them.

Here's a few:

Sorting the cards

It's fun to sort and classify the cards in many different ways. You can put all the reds in one pile and all the blacks in another. You can put all the hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs together. You can put all the numbers together and you can even put the cards in numerical order from lowest to highest or highest to lowest. Each time the cards are sorted in a different way, it builds on important maths skills and sorting and classifying is just as important as counting and ordering.

Playing Card Games

Good old “Snap” is a great game for kids to start with and children as young as 2 can often get the hang - even if you start by just matching black and red. It builds on concentration and reflexes as well as helping to identify numbers, colours and symbols. It's also heaps of fun and guaranteed to get participants laughing. Unfortunately it sometimes gets participants crying too, but learning that you can have fun without "winning" is also important.

Older kids will enjoy games that are slightly more complicated. My hub loves a good card game and has taught the kids to play something called "2's and 3's". It's something he used to play when he was a kid. There are loads of great card games for kids and I think the best thing to do is try to remember what you enjoyed.

If you have no idea, you could try these ideas from About.com

Solitaire

I taught both the kids how to play “Clock Solitaire” and they both loved it. It was a real favourite of mine when I was young. It's the easiest to learn out of all the “Solitaries” and is great for concentrating, remembering, learning numbers and time as well as working motor skills when handling, shuffling and dealing the cards.

Here's a link to how to play "Clock "Solitaire" if you've forgotten the rules.


Building Card Houses

My kids had the most fun (and frustration!!) with this old fave. It was actually great for Em who sometimes finds it hard when things don't go the way she wants them to. It really worked on her patience, persistence and acceptance. Ed had great fun too, controlling his muscles and sense of balance to get the cards sitting just right.

Ed's Masterpiece