What toys and activities do you use to improve children's gross and fine motor?
I especially want to hear from preschool and kindergarten teachers. My 6 year old first grader is homeschooled and is clumsy at sports (this soccer season is his first exposure to organized sports). He also writes his letters from the bottom up, a habit that makes for messy letters and is VERY difficult to break.
I also have a four year old who will be five in November, is in part time nursery school and will be in kindergarten next fall. He spends lots of time playing with tiny cars, crayons, and blocks, also tinker toys, lincoln logs and wooden train tracks are his favourites. Nevertheless, his writing is so big and scrawling that I’m concerned it will be "passable for kindergarten" by next fall! He can write a few letters, his own name, can copy shapes and cut with scissors OK.
Any toys or FUN activities I can expose him to to get him ready for kindergarten? I guess I’m a little skittish since his big brother had some serious fine motor and gross motor difficulties.
Is he left handed (the one writing funny)? My daughter is and she writes that way a lot and I’m trying really hard to keep my lefty son from doing the same. Home schooled as well. Do you belong to a home school association? How about co-op? they both have PE programs here and that’s what we do to help with the sports. The four yo sounds about right on track the writing will improve as time passes and those are my 5 yo favorite activities. Try letting him write in a bowl of sand or on a dry erase board or anything he can mistake for pure fun. My son plays a lot on http://www.starfall.com its a free phonics site and we work a couple of worksheets a day in phonics handwriting and math and leave it at that right now. If you want a good handwriting program try Handwriting Without Tears. I know you can get it at http://www.sonlight.com