Mark making is important as this is where the journey starts in being able to learn to write. Children will develop many skills whilst they are on this journey and all of this will contribute to early literacy skills. Children use mark-making as a visible way to tell stories and express their feelings.
- Shaving foam and paintbrushes.Squirt some shaving foam into a tuff spot tray and provide children with different sized paintbrushes to make marks in the shaving foam.
- Painting on foil. Fix a sheet of foil to the table and fill some pots of paint up with paint and let the children use their paintbrushes to make patterns on the foil.
- Cling film and paint. Squirt some different coloured paint onto the table, and then completely cover the table with Clingfilm. Make sure no paint seeps out. Encourage the children to use their fingers to move the paint around that is under the cling film. Children will begin to see the marks they have made. This is also a good activity for colour mixing.
- Paint in a zip lock bag. Fill a zip lock bag with paint and zip the bag up and place this on a table or even on the floor. Watch as the children use their fingers to make marks in the paints. A nice messy free activity.
Number Formation
Doorway Online provides a fun and interactive number and letter formation. Your child can trace the letter/number with their hand or stylus on the screen.
FINE MOTOR SKILLS
Playing with Play Dough is a really good activity to help strengthen the muscles in your child’s hands. Squeezing softballs, opening and closing pegs, pushing Lego bricks together, using a hole punch etc. also help develop hand strength.
Winding, Twisting and screwing activities – These types of activities give children practice at moving their hands and fingers in different ways. Activities like taking lids off and on bottles and jars, twisting a nut up and down the thread of a bolt, using a toy screwdriver or wrench in a toy tool set or winding, windup toys, are all good examples of this.
Making things balance – Building blocks, building towers etc. that balance involves hand to eye coordination. If you don’t have blocks, you can stack up tins or upside-down plastic cups. You may have actual stacking rings and cup games at home already. Also playing with figures and toys that require balancing to stand up e.g. action figures, dolls, soldiers, trees and animals, helps to build hand to eye coordination.
Nesting activities, i.e. making things fit inside each other for example playing with Russian dolls, nesting cups and boxes which are designed to fit inside each other. If don’t have any, empty plastic tubs or cardboard boxes of different sizes are still fun to play with, to put things inside and to fit inside each other. Your child begins to understand about size and space through these activities also. Practice manipulation of small objects by playing with pegs for example or tweezers and picking up objects like beans, pasta, beads, pom poms etc. You can combine this with sorting or just have fun trying to put them in a jar or tin. Just be very careful if you are giving your child small objects and don’t leave them unattended.
Threading activities are good for developing fine motor skills and hand to eye coordination. You can practise threading beads, buttons or pasta shapes onto cord, string or wool to make necklaces, bracelets, worms or caterpillars. You could thread through holes in card or foam to make a shape or pattern. Folding, wrapping and unwrapping activities are good – folding paper into shapes or wrapping and unwrapping objects.
Perhaps a toy needs a bandage put on? Fold the paper to make a hat or boat or to make a paper snowflake. You could fold napkins for the dinner table, fold clothes to put away or fold dolls/teddies clothes.
Cutting activities – practising cutting out simple shapes or following lines, straight or wavy. Get your child to put some stickers on a sheet of paper then they need to cut a line from one sticker to the next. You could put stickers or draw stars in a circle and they need to cut right through each shape to cut out the circle. (Use appropriate scissors for safety)
Tearing activities – Controlled tearing of paper for craft activities etc. is another activity which helps develop little fingers and hand to eye coordination. Tearing paper in half or in strips, is good and the strips can be used for pictures e.g. blue for the sea, green for grass or yellow for sand etc.
Jigsaw Puzzles – manipulating the pieces in a simple jigsaw is good for both matching skills and fine motor skills. It can be the wooden missing piece type puzzles or simple puzzles with a few pieces. Jigsaws usually come with an age rating to help give an idea of the age-appropriateness of the puzzle.
