This article appeared in "First Teacher" magazine.
| Containers and Lids: Select a variety of plastic containers and their lids. Include bottles and jars as well as margarine-type tubs in your collection. Encourage children to use these containers as they explore the play yard picking up leaves, nuts, etc. Putting items in the containers requires muscle control. Putting snap-on lids on containers and screwing on jar lids and bottle tops are activities that exercise different muscles. |
| Tearing Paper: Children love to tear paper. Even toddlers can tear tissue paper. Provide many kinds of paper for children to tear and provide grocery bags for the scraps. Picking up tiny paper scraps gives fingers another work out. You can also offer child-size brooms and rakes for cleaning up scraps that fall on the ground. Large muscles need work, too! |
| Pasting and Gluing: Bring large paper and paste or glue outside so children can glue down the paper scraps (from above) in a giant collage. Use the collage to decorate the door to the outside play area. |
| Snack Time: Children can thread O-shaped cereal onto pretzel sticks during an outdoor snack time, then eat the tasty treat. Offer plenty of cool water or juice, and let each child pour his own from a small pitcher or measuring cup. |
| Sand Play: Occasionally remove shovels and other digging implements
from the sand area so children must dig with their hands and fingers. At
other times, add water to dampen the sand and again encourage children to
dig with their hands and fingers.
Add teaspoons and tablespoons to the sand area, and add small containers (like yogurt cups) for children to fill by using the spoons to scoop the sand. Bury plastic bottle caps and sea shells in the sand. Tell children to use their fingers to retrieve the hidden treasure. |
| Punching Holes: Give children a hole punch and scrap paper and let them make things to string on yarn. Falling, punched-out holes decorate the play yard ground. |
| Stringing Things: Wrap a bit of masking tape around the end of a piece of yarn and knot the yarn's other end around a piece of macaroni. Offer a variety of items for stringing: paper scraps with holes punched in them, pasta wagon wheels, cardboard tubes cut into rings; fat drinking straws cut into 1/2-inch pieces, Styrofoam chips with holes in them. Children hang the completed strings on an outdoor fence for decoration. Caution: If children use the decorative strings as necklaces, they shouldn't wear them during active outdoor play. There is too much danger of the necklace getting caught on something as children run or slide by, choking the child. |
| Fence Weaving: Give children strips of fabric, plastic, foil, and yarn to weave at random through the playground fence. This can be an ongoing project that grows through the summer. |
| Wringing and Twisting: Put several dishpans of water outside. Add soap to half. Give children cloth napkins, dish towels, wash cloths, doll clothes and baby clothes to wash and rinse. They will squeeze and wring the fabrics. |
| Pinching: Provide clothespins so children can hang the wash on the fence or on wire hangers you've hung on the fence. Pinching clothespins strengthens the three fingers children will later use for pencil control. |
| Squeezing: Put eyedroppers or turkey basters in dishpans of water. Add a few plastic bottles for children to fill as they squeeze the bulbs on the eyedroppers and basters. In hot weather, children may use the basters to squirt each other with a stream of cooling water. The summer sun will quickly dry children, so allow this kind of play. |
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