Motor Skills
Motor Skills Sub Categories
Teach your toddler how to cut a banana
Snack time is a breeze when your toddler has some practice with this useful activity.
What you Need for this Toddler Activity…
* A banana
* A butter knife
* 2 plates
* A tray (Trays are useful for containing activities and helping your toddler stay focused)
How you Do It…
- Don’t peel the banana, but get it started by cutting the top near the stem.
- Place the banana on one of the plates. Then, place both plates and the butter knife on the tray.
- Present the tray to your toddler.
- Help your toddler peel the banana and put the peel pieces on the empty plate.
- Then, help your toddler use the butter knife to slice the banana
Tips…
* As always, use your best judgment with this activity.
Related Posts:
Stop, Go, and More! (Free Activity Download)
Free Download for Stop, Go, and More signs
Get your toddler moving and teach valuable pre-reading skills with this fun activity.
It takes a little time to prepare, but once you are ready to go, you and your toddler can have fun over and over again!
What you need for this activity…
* Popsicle sticks
* A color print-out of the free Stop, Go, and More download printed on thick paper
* An extra piece of thick paper for the backs of the signs
Preparing this activity…
1. Hold the Stop, Go, and More print-out and the extra piece of paper together and cut out each circle. (This will give you a colored “sign” circle and a blank circle for the back.)
2. Glue each sign circle to a popsicle stick. Then, glue on a back so that the popsicle stick is sandwiched between a sign and a blank back.
3. Allow to dry. (You may want to put the signs under heavy books to keep them flat.
Get your Toddler Moving…
Different toddlers will want to play with the signs in different ways. Some like to lead. Some like to follow. Whether you or your toddler chooses the signs and directs the activity, the keys are:
- Read the sign out-loud and repeat it as you do what the sign says to do. (This will help your toddler associate the words with the actions.)
- Hold the sign up as you do what it says so your toddler repeatedly sees the word(s).
- Switch signs frequently to keep your toddler moving and excited.
- After you have gone through the signs a couple of times, encourage your toddler to guess what the sign says.
Related Posts:
Toddler iPad Apps We Love: Fish School HD
Fish School HD absolutely rocks! My spirited toddler will happily navigate from game to game in this fantastic toddler app. Happy little fish help him practice his alphabet letters, numbers, shapes, colors, and matching. All the while, he improves his fine motor skills. If your toddler is anything like mine, you have to get Fish School HD. They will have a blast practicing all of their preschool skills!
From the Toddler App Developer
Welcome to Fish School HD – with letters, numbers, shapes, colors, matching, and more! Brought to you by the creators of Wheels on the Bus, an award-winning, educational iPhone app – featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, Gizmodo, Discovery Channel, MSNBC.com, Wired.com, and Daily Candy.
Related Posts:
Great Educational Toys for Spirited Toddler Boys
Finding toys that are both entertaining and educational can be hard. Finding them for a spirited toddler by that can hardly sit still, can be down right tough. Below are some of my 2 year-old boy’s favorite toys right now.
My 2 year-old is into trains…Today. Tomorrow, he might be into farms or airplanes or who knows? We got him the The Great Toy Story Train Chase from Lego Duplo because when he outgrows trains, he can use the blocks to build something else. Since all of the sets work together, we have fun turning his barn into a train station and making his fire truck into an emergency milk delivery truck.
Duplo’s are great for building fine motor skills and absolutely fantastic for cognitive skills. My son can take apart the train and put it back together faster than I can. And, the sense of fulfillment he gets when he creates something new is great for his self esteem.
Hotwheels Color Shifters are a fantastic way to practice colors with toddlers. Dunk them in water and they change colors depending on the temperature. We keep a small bowl of water with ice in it next to the bath and our toddler is so engaged that he hardly notices when we wash his hair. Incidentally, they also will change color if you hold them in your warm hands. This has kept him occupied out of the tub too.
Along with entertaining our spirited toddler, the cars give us a great opportunity to practice colors. Such a silly toy, but we all love them.
The Classic Doodle Sketch is a modern day twist on the Etch A Sketch. My son happily entertains himself by drawing with the magnetic pen and shape stamps and then erasing his pictures with the little slider. (The slider alone makes this toy great for spirited toddlers.)
Most of the time, we use it together though. He likes to tell me what to draw and I do my best to make a cartoon representation of it. (Without a second’s notice, he wipes it clean and asks for something else.) Sometimes, we practice our letters and reading by writing the names of movies that he can choose from or places we are going or people we are going to see.
I absolutely love the Shapes Magnetic Book (Magnetic Play & Learn). It comes with a bunch of magnetic shapes that you can use to make pictures in the book. We use it during potty time because it is pretty self-contained and entertains him more than just a book. It is also good for long car trips and visiting relatives that believe that children should be seen and not heard.
The best part is that he doesn’t even realize that he is practicing his shapes and colors.
In case you are new to WildEdisons, I love alphabet puzzle mats. There are so many educational toddler activities you can do with them. For some ideas, check out my post Toddler Alphabet Puzzle Mat Activities.
Related Posts:
Toddler iPad Apps We Love: My first Tangrams HD
My first Tangrams HD is a fantastic toddler iPad app which helps my 2 year-old practice his fine motor skills and shapes at the same time.
This game is an adaptation for kids of the famous Tangram game. In the basic game, your toddler sees a picture that is made out of shapes. The shapes are shown below the picture.
The object of the game is to drag the shapes on to the picture. When you complete the picture, the game applauds. It sounds easy, but if you are a toddler who has yet to master their fine motor skills, it can be a fun challenge.
We generally give our toddler a running commentary of the shapes that he is moving on the screen, so he gets a little practice learning his shapes too.
Check out the video below to see our toddler, Edison, playing the game.
