calvin's story: kindness and acceptance

calvin's story: kindness and acceptance

Plastic Bottle Coloring

I recently discovered how much fun it is for children to color on the plastic from bottles. I use white bottles so that its easiest to see the marker and use dry erase markers that they can wipe away. The markers I found have erasers attached to the cap and as you will see in the video its fun to erase with them. Any activity that motivates children to scribble is great for developing finger motor control and eventually the tripod grasp.

I was playing with couple of neighbor 2 year olds to see if they liked my adapted lacing board, but one little girl preferred coloring and wow she was really good at it. I like the idea of scribbling on the handle also because it requires stabilization and a lot of motor planning to erase the markings that end up in hidden spots.

There are a lot of games using these with older children to work on motor control. For example, we can take turns erasing certain colors or shapes I can color in some hidden spots in the handle and ask the child to find and erase them.

A little girl in the video is also demonstrating the manipulation pants I couldn't pass up while shopping in Staples. I don't mind a 2 dollar impulse buy when it has zippers and snaps and can store markers:-)

Screen Time

As much as I love to manipulate objects I have been having some nice screen time over the last few weeks. I just returned from camping in Vermont where I met this adorable 2 year old. She  loved drawing on my Nook and pressing the numbers I pointed to to connect the dots and make a picture.  I think that forming lines and shapes with the index finger on a screen is a nice companion to doing this in finger point, wet sand or other sensory media. Its so easy for parents to entertain a young child in the car while working on finger control and forming shapes.