Bring the outdoors inside with this fine motor activity inspired by the book Backpack Explorer: On the Nature Trail: What Will You Find? Show your child the illustrated instructions and have him or her lead the prep work.
The idea for this activity is to encourage your child to want to go outside and explore nature and then to bring home a few souvenirs you find along the way. Look for a few sturdy natural elements, a pine cone is ideal. Other good finds include acorns, a twig, or a stone. Also, find some more fragile items, like a leaf or flower petal. Once at home, sit together and demonstrate how to put rubber bands around the sturdier items, then try again with the more fragile ones. Talk about the differences in strengths and textures as you carefully place rubber bands around your finds.
Fine motor activities are fantastic for play-based learning. They keep kids busy and focused on a small task. This particular activity should help strengthen hand muscles, improve dexterity, and boost hand-eye coordination; all things which will come in useful when developing writing skills.
Here are the four steps illustrated above:
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Go outside. Get some fresh air, explore your immediate surroundings with a leisurely stroll.
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Gather bits of nature. Try to find a pine cone, then look for other sturdy items (acorn, twig, stone, etc.) and fragile items (leaf, flower, etc.)
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Put rubber bands around the items you’ve found.
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Once your child is comfortable with the activity, add a timed component. Set your kitchen time or phone timer for a minute and see how many rubber bands your child can loop around a specific object. Or, make a mission-inspired game: challenge your child to put rubber bands on three objects within the minute. If you have multi-colored rubber bands, and your child seems very comfortable with the activity, see if you can assign colors to items and ask your child to put red rubber bands on the pine cone and blue rubber bands on acorns, for example.
Here are some book-based talking points:
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What was your favorite adventure in the book? What did you love about it?
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What did you think about the leaf shapes? Did you notice any leaves that were nibbled by insects?
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Did you notice any bugs on barks of trees with your magnifying glass? Did you find an “earwig” like we mentioned in the letter e tracing activity from above?
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Do you have a new sound of nature you like? (wind in trees, insect buzzing, leaf crunching, etc.) What is it? What do you like about it?
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Can you identify different clouds now? Which one is your favorite?
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Now that you’ve thought more about different animals and where they live, if you could be an
animal, what animal would you want to be and why? -
Was there a texture that you discovered you don’t like? (something sticky, rough, wet?)
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What “patch” are you most excited to have received?
