Sensory Play Promotes All Areas of Children's Development

I pulled this excerpt from a brochure for co-op parents. It refers to how sensory play is fostering development. It's so much more than just play!

Intellectual Development

• To develop creativity
• To understand cause and effect
• To refine problem-solving skills
• To learn basic math concepts such as volume, conservation, measuring, and comparing

Social & Emotional Development

• To learn and play cooperatively with others
• To develop group social skills
• To develop perseverance
• To explore social roles and relationships
• To deal with fears and problems

Physical Development

• To strengthen fine motor control
• To enhance eye-hand coordination
• To refine visual discrimination

Also not mentioned is how relaxing and stress-relieving it can be!

I Recommend...Fiskars brand scissors

As a parent and early childhood educator, I trust Fiskars for my children's scissoring needs.

http://www.fiskars.com/content/school_en_us/School/whyfiskars/teacher+knows+best

Pre-Cutting Activities

Strengthen your child's scissoring skills with some simple ideas:

1. The wooden clothespins (the kind that do NOT pinch open and sort of look like little soldiers) slide easily onto the lid of a container-oatmeal, frosting, box...make up a game?

2. Squeeze clothespins

3. Playdough, cutting playdough with scissors

4. Real clay with clay tools and hammers

5. Sort pom-poms or manipulatives

6. Finger plays, hand and finger puppets

7. Tear paper (torn paper collage)

8. Snip or fringe paper

To encourage proper grip on the scissors, make up a little tune and repeat this

Thumb on the top

Fingers on the bottom

Keep your elbow in

Toilet Paper Tube Binoculars

Share recycling with your children.

Is this the world you want to leave them?

Tape two toilet paper tubes together and you have binoculars for a bird walk or spotting animals at the zoo. Maybe a nice addition if your little man is playing soldier for the day or if your princess is looking out the window for her prince charming to come along. Decorate 'em, paint 'em camo, add a string...make it yours!

Responding to Children's Artwork

Sometimes I find myself in a rut of responding to children’s artwork with “Oh, that’s pretty!” Do you catch yourself doing that too? How boring it must be to hear that again and again! Asking “What is it?” implies that what they created must represent something but the child may have been exploring a media or expressing a mood. When we make more specific comments, we let children know we are really looking at the picture, and not judging it. Try these:

“Is there a story that goes with your picture?”
“You made some interesting color combinations with the paint.”
“Can you show me a red line?” (Describe what you see in the artwork.)
“Where would you like your name?” (Spell it aloud as you print.)
“These shapes must have been tricky to make.”
“How do the curvy lines make you feel?”
“You worked really hard to cover the whole paper.”

Stages of Art Development - The Universal Tadpole

Do your preschooler's drawing of people look somewhat like the form above? Right on! This is what I would expect from a preschooler developmentally. Your child is drawing "universal tadpoles!" When children all over the world are asked to draw a person at this stage, the same general form appears. Some sort of roundish blob with arms and legs and sometimes a face. It starts as a simple blob and lines and as the child develops you'll get more and more human details.

For fun, you can ask your child "Can you show me where the belly button is?"

"By understanding the developmental stages children progress through when drawing, you will be able to allow your child to express themselves spontaneously (Kellogg, 1969)."

· Ages 2 -3--scribbling. All children, regardless of their culture, make the same markings, in the same way at approximately the same age.
· Ages 2-4--scribbles take shape and look like circles, ovals, squares, triangles and crosses.
· Ages 3-5--children begin to make designs from the shapes they have been drawing.
· Ages 4-5--designs take on the form of people
· Age 5-6--children are at the pictorial stage

When parents understand the various stages all children go through, they will know it’s the child's first step in the developmental process of learning to draw.

Page 3 of the following shows pictures of the developmental stages in early childhood art. http://www.crayola.com/educators/media/successGuides_ece.pdf

Paint Sample Color Seriation

This is a freebie activity! Next time you are at a home supply store or any store that carries paint, pick up doubles of a few paint sample cards.

For younger kids:

With one card, leave whole.

With its match, cut apart.

Match the cut-outs to the whole card.

For older kids:

Use cut apart cards with no reference card to match to. It's tricky- the more shades on the card, the more visual discrimination comes into play.

Storage Idea: Envelopes

*Variation: Seriate sandpaper by roughness, fabric by texture, objects by physical characteristics like height or weight.