Growing Bookworms: Toys that help develop fine motor skills in children
Posted: June 8, 2022 Filed under: Growing Bookworms, Teaching Writing, Writing | Tags: Fine Motor Skills, Growing Bookworms, Robbie Cheadle, Teaching Writing, Writing to be Read 41 Comments
It is important for children to develop good fine motor skills so they can perform important tasks such as feeding themselves, grasping objects, drawing, cutting, and writing. Successful achievement of these skills increases children’s confidence.
These are a few examples of toys that help children develop fine motor skills:
Threading beads
Threading beads on a string is an excellent activity for small children. Large beads with thick stings and large holes are best for younger children. Sets with smaller beads, strings and holes are available for older children. Children love making necklaces and bracelets for themselves, parents and other caregivers.
Lacing cards
Lacing involves threading a string or shoelace through a board. It is the same action that is used to thread shoelaces in a shoe. Parents and caregivers can create their own board using cardboard and scissors or a paper punch. Alternatively, you can purchase lacing kits.
Building blocks
Building blocks have many benefits other than improved fine motor skills. Among these are increased attention span, working with other children i.e. team work, gross motor skills, science concepts (such as gravity, weight, stability and balance), spatial development, early maths and number concepts, and language development. Lego is a more advanced form of building with blocks.
Drawing and painting tools
Drawing and painting is a wonderful and fun way of allowing children to develop their fine motor skills. There are a variety of different instruments for drawing and painting, including wax crayons, oil pastels, paints of all sorts, coloured pens and pencils, ect.
Drawing has the added benefit of teaching children how to hold a tool or instrument to make shapes and drawings on a surface.
Puzzles
Puzzle come in all sorts of shapes and sizes from shape sorters for very young children to large, complex puzzles for older children. There are also a variety of colourful peg boards that are available for children.
I had all of these toys for my children and I used to sit and do activities with them in the afternoons. I also used to get the boys to cut out shapes and stick them on paper to make interesting designs. Michael struggled with cutting and it was one of the first indicators I identified of his auditory processing barrier.
Did you do any of these activities with your children? If yes, do you think they helped your child with learning to write? Let me know if the comments.
About Robbie Cheadle
Robbie Cheadle is a South African children’s author and poet with 9 children’s books and 2 poetry books.
The 7 Sir Chocolate children’s picture books, co-authored by Robbie and Michael Cheadle, are written in sweet, short rhymes which are easy for young children to follow and are illustrated with pictures of delicious cakes and cake decorations. Each book also includes simple recipes or biscuit art directions which children can make under adult supervision.
Robbie has also published 2 books for older children which incorporate recipes that are relevant to the storylines.
Robbie has 2 adult novels in the paranormal historical and supernatural fantasy genres published under the name Roberta Eaton Cheadle. She also has short stories in the horror and paranormal genre and poems included in several anthologies.
Robbie writes a monthly series for https://writingtoberead.com called Growing Bookworms. This series discusses different topics relating to the benefits of reading to children.
Robbie has a blog, https://robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com/ where she shares book reviews, recipes, author interviews, and poetry.
Find Robbie Cheadle
Blog: https://www.robbiecheadle.co.za/
Blog: robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com
Twitter: BakeandWrite
Instagram: Robbie Cheadle – Instagram
Facebook: Sir Chocolate Books
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Growing Bookworms: Handwriting skills for children, Part 2
Posted: July 14, 2021 Filed under: Education, Growing Bookworms, Literacy, Reading, Teaching Writing, Writing, Writing Tips | Tags: Growing Bookworms, Handwriting, Robbie Cheadle, Teaching Writing, Writing to be Read 61 Comments
Last month, I discussed the reasons why handwriting is still important for both children and adults. You can read that post here: https://writingtoberead.com/2021/06/09/raising-bookworms-handwriting-skills-for-children-part-1/
Today, I am going to focus on strategies to improve handwriting.
The age of the child determines the best strategies for improving handwriting.
For a beginner writer in the early grades, the following strategies are useful to help children practice their handwriting and gain confidence with writing:
Make handwriting fun
There are a few ways you can make practicing handwriting more fun. You can give your child a fun or special pencil to use to practice writing. A stripped one or a pencil covered in flowers or cars. You can also play simple games that involve writing like hangman, word puzzles and anagrams.
I started writing the Sir Chocolate series of books with Michael to help him improve his handwriting. He used to write out the stories as we made them up. He tried very hard to write nicely in these little books we created.
Develop fine motor skills
Developing your child’s fine motor skills by drawing and painting, playing with play dough, cutting, threading, sand play, lego and building blocks are all great ways of encouraging children to manipulate small objects.
Correct pencil grip
Make sure your child is holding the pencil in a pincer grip and also using both hands to control the paper.
Here is a fun video song to help children with the correct pencil grip:
The correct equipment
Some children struggle to hold a regular pencil and do better with a shorter, smaller, or kid-sized pencil. Give your child an eraser so that s/he is confident and not afraid of making mistakes.
Use writing everywhere
You can practice handwriting in lots of fun places. You can write in the sand on the beach or on a foggy window or mirror. You can write in chalk on the driveway and you can even write on fondant with an edible ink pen.
About Robbie Cheadle
Robbie Cheadle is a South African children’s author and poet with 9 children’s books and 1 poetry book.
The 7 Sir Chocolate children’s picture books, co-authored by Robbie and Michael Cheadle, are written in sweet, short rhymes which are easy for young children to follow and are illustrated with pictures of delicious cakes and cake decorations. Each book also includes simple recipes or biscuit art directions which children can make under adult supervision.
Robbie has also published 2 books for older children which incorporate recipes that are relevant to the storylines.
Robbie has 2 adult novels in the paranormal historical and supernatural fantasy genres published under the name Roberta Eaton Cheadle. She also has short stories in the horror and paranormal genre and poems included in several anthologies.
Robbie writes a monthly series for https://writingtoberead.com called Growing Bookworms. This series discusses different topics relating to the benefits of reading to children.
Robbie has a blog, https://robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com/ where she shares book reviews, recipes, author interviews, and poetry.
Find Robbie Cheadle
Blog: https://www.robbiecheadle.co.za/
Blog: robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com
Twitter: BakeandWrite
Instagram: Robbie Cheadle – Instagram
Facebook: Sir Chocolate Books
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Want to be sure not to miss any of Robbie’s “Growing Bookworms” segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.
Share this:
Writing for a YA Audience: School is in Session
Posted: November 21, 2018 Filed under: Teaching Writing, Writing, Writing for a YA Audience | Tags: Jordan Elizabeth, Teaching Writing, Writing, Writing for a YA Audience, Young Adult 1 Comment
I might be a writer, but I’m also a teacher. Ever since I took my first class – ballet, age 3 – I wanted to teach. I taught my dolls whatever I learned. I taught my maternal grandmother. Beneath the expert tutelage of a child age 5, she learned yoga, tap, jazz, and Spanish. I contribute a lot of my success in Spanish (as in, I passed) to the hours spent teaching it to her. Teaching was what I wanted to do.
Photo by Abel Tan Jun Yang on Pexels.com
I went to college for elementary education. I imagined a classroom of eager faces mirroring my grandmother’s. We would do the best projects and everyone would love learning. I walked in with my arms filled with my favorite books, materials for astronomy models, and a skip in my step.
Instead, I was faced with mandatory testing and parents angry that their child had homework on the night when they watch reality TV. After college, I switched to teaching young adults in a collegial setting. I fell in love with teaching all over again. They were eager to learn. (Well, most of them.) I didn’t have to deal with parents who used foul language while screaming at their kid for using the same foul language. There weren’t days spent learning how to pass a mandatory test instead of mastering the material. Anyway, I digress…
I went from teaching adults at a local community college to teaching adults for a financial institute. On the side, I started teaching classes in one of my passions: writing. Libraries in the area were willing to give me time on weekends or weeknights to teach writing to anyone who wanted to come, free of charge. The classes ranged from general writing tips to fantasy-specific discussions to how to get published.
Still today, even though I’m no longer teaching as a day job, I lead classes at local libraries. The classes are always small and intimate – five people to ten. This gives us the opportunity to have one-on-one discussions and to have the attendees share selections of writing for feedback. Most recently, in August, I got to teach a two-part fantasy workshop to youth for a library summer program. The ideas they came up with were complex and original. They weren’t afraid to write out of the box.
The best part about teaching a writing class is observing the passion in everyone’s face. Whereas my grandmother’s passion came from helping me better myself, these students have a passion for the written word, and I’ll do anything I can to help them expand that passion.
Jordan Elizabeth is a young adult fantasy author. If you’re a teacher or librarian, she would love to talk to you about leading a workshop or giving a presentation. You can connect with Jordan via her website, JordanElizabethBooks.com.
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