Spring Activity Suggestions

 

Spring has arrived and now it is time to get back outside!  Here are a few activity suggestions that will support your child's classroom performance.

 

Life Skills:

• Less bulky spring jackets and sweatshirts are perfect to practice zippering.  Use the motivation of outside play to get those jackets quickly on and zipped up.
   
• The garden centers are full of a great seletion of seeds that you can start indoors and then plant outside once the weather is warm enough.  Watering the plants with a small spray bottle is a great way to strengthen the thumb and first two fingers that are needed for writing.  Using a small rake and trowel is a wonderful way to improve hand strength as well.

 

Fine Motor Skills:

• Have fun with play dough activities.  Your child can cut play dough with scissors, roll balls and snakes to make flowers, bugs or butterflys or dig out coins that you hide (also an opportunity to work on counting and coin recognition).

 

• Paper folding activities can be adjusted to any level.  Have you tried folding paper into 1/3rd for an envelope, making paper airplanes, or fortune tellers (to practice spelling words or to introduce spring vocabulary ).  The library has several choices of simple orgami projects that you can try.

 

Handwriting:

• Scratch of Art by Rose Art can be found at Michael's arts and crafts stores or in Oriental Trading catelogs. Scratch off art is black paper that you use either a dowel (that looks like a pencil) or a popcycle stick to scratch off the top layer to reveal the colors below. Your child can draw pictures or practice writing their name or spelling words.

 

• Play tic tac toe with either letters that are difficult for your child to make (instead of just X or O's) or you can make a grid and they can write a spelling word over and over again (instead of a X or O)