Circles and Fine Motor Skills

Today we had a lesson that continued our study on circles. I put out a certain number of coins, and let them put the money in a piggy bank. (Make sure you know what that certain number is, so you know if you're missing any at the end.) Also, do not leave the kids alone with these coins. They are a choking hazard afterall.

This is good for many reasons. One, it helps with fine motor skills. Fine motor skills are the skills your fingers to do things. Developing good fine motor skill is important in order to learn to write and cut with scissors.

Something else that this activity helps with is knowing what a circle is. This activity is great because it allows kids to actually feel what a circle feels like. How there are no points, or corners. I talked in my last post about school about how toddler's (and preschoolers, for that matter) learning needs to be mainly kinestetic and/or tactile. That means that they need to learn by feeling, or by doing.

I learned recently, that you should always have kids work from left to right. This helps them get used to the left-to-right motion that they use when they read. Makes sense, huh?

So I put the coins on the left, and the bank on the right. Now, the closer they get to the 'learning-to-read age", the more concerned you want to be about them not doing it right to left. My kids, on occasion would set the coins down on the right while they were putting a different coin in the slot on the bank. Now, at this age (eighteen-twenty months) you can either just let them pick those (one or two coins) up on the right and put them in, or you can just move them back to the left.

You do NOT want this to turn into a power struggle, or for there to be any stress. Learning needs to be fun.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me through comments, or through my email, which is listed in my 'About Me."