We are working on our winter theme and I made a snowman letter tracing activity for letter recognition and fine motor development. I printed the patterns on cardstock and then laminated them for durability.

Children trace the letters with their fingers first and then with a washable marker. If you do not laminate the letter tracers you can use pencils as well as markers. Q-tips that the children dip in paint also work well for the children to trace over the letters.

You can watch a video of this activity by clicking the image below. This activity is currently located in the member's section which is also where I have added Snowman Fine Motor Dots ... Scissor Skills ... and Pre-Writing Cards.

We are working on fine motor turkey activities this week and I wanted to share them with you. You can use the patterns to trace around on construction paper or cardstock paper. You can also free cut the turkey pieces and glue them together.

Both buttons and pony beads are excellent to use for this activity. Children can place them on the matching color turkey feathers. Because of their size pony beads provide a little more of a challenge for the children to pick up and hold which really helps those fine motor skills.

We also use mini clothespins that the children attach to the turkey feathers. I would recommend laminating the turkey for durability when using buttons ... clothespins ... or the pony beads.

These turkeys also make the cutest fine motor craft projects. We put glue in a small container along with qtips. The children dab glue onto the feathers and then press the sequins on the glue dots.

Children can also cut or tear tissue paper into small squares and scrunch them. They then glue the tissue paper on to the feathers.

You can see a video of all the activities along with how I made the turkey by clicking the image below. The patterns are also located below.

fine motor turkey pattern

​

I made fall themed cutting strips to help work on beginning scissor skills and fine motor development. I printed the strips on cardstock paper and cut them out. I included both black and white as well as color patterns.

The black and white strips can be colored before cutting for extra fine motor work. They can also be printed on color paper to save on ink. There are three different kinds of cutting strips so you have a choice of which to use (I use them all).

All of the cutting strips involve straight line cutting which I believe works best for children who are just starting to cut using guides. There is a set of strips that has five images on them and the children cut along the lines to separate those images. They can then do a sorting activity with them.

I have also included snip strips in which the children snip the line beneath images. You can see a video of this activity and download the patterns below.

fall scissor skills patterns

​

I made an activity to help with scissor control and fine motor skills. I printed the patterns on cardstock paper and cut along the center line on each page. 

You can print the patterns on cardstock or regular paper. In the image above I printed the black and white patterns on color cardstock paper. There are single shape cards and double shape cards for children to practice their scissor skills.

In this activity children cut along the dashed lines on each shape card. I have found that using cardstock paper helps keep the paper more rigid for younger children while they are using scissors which is helpful.

As of 2022 this activity can be found in the member's section. which is also where I have added Shape Tracers.

This is one of our favorite fall craft projects to make!!  We do it over a span of two to three days but you can adjust it to fit the needs of your early learners.  We use large sheets of construction paper (usually sold right next to the regular sized construction paper) but if you do not want to make giant scarecrows you can scale the project down to make smaller ones.

You can either have the pieces already cut out for younger children to put together or have guide pieces set out for the children to use as a reference for cutting their scarecrow pieces.

You will need to have a head ... hat ... pants ... shirt body ... sleeves ... straw ... eyes and a nose.  You will also need to have various colors of tissue paper that has been cut or torn into squares.

Once all of the pieces have been cut out it is time to put them all together.  You can put them together any way you wish but I found that we had the most success starting with the head and working our way down.

The hat gets glued at the very top of the head and the shirt body on top of the bottom of the head.  You want to make sure to leave enough room  to make a face on the head.

The sleeves the next to get glued on and they should be glued behind the shirt body.  The sleeves can be angled in any direction.

The pants are glued under the bottom of the shirt.  We used three inch long strips of yellow paper glued to the bottom of the hat ... arms ... and legs to represent straw.

We glued the eyes and nose on the scarecrow head and also drew a mouth with a marker. The last step was to glue the tissue paper squares on the scarecrow.

You can see a video of this project below:

We made paper plate ladybugs this week and they turned out super cute. We did this project over a two day period to make sure we had enough time for the paint to dry.

To make the lady you will need red paint ... glue ... scissors ... black construction paper ... wiggles eyes ... and paper plates. We used the thicker chinette brand for our paper plates.

The first step is to paint the back of the paper plates red. You can do this by using a paint and paint brush or a paint dauber. After we painted the plates we let them dry for the rest of the day.

We cut head shapes out of black construction paper and glued them on to the bottom of the paper plates.

The next step was to glue wiggle eyes on the heads. If you do not have wiggle eyes a different color of construction paper such as yellow or blue cut into small circles will work fine.

We cut circle shapes out of black construction paper and glue them on to the painted paper plate. You can put as many or as little spots on the ladybugs as you want.

We cut black construction paper into 3-4 inch lengths and folded them back and forth (accordion style) for the legs.  We glued three on each side of the paper plate.

We hung our ladybugs up around the room.  The children got lots of fine motor practice through the use of scissors and gluing pieces together.

You can see a video of this project below: