Friday, November 21, 2008

Native American Indian Trail and Thanksgiving pictures

Here are pictures and video from the activities in the Motor Room over the last 3 weeks.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Monster Mash Pictures

Enjoy the pictures from our Monster Mash activities.

Native American Indian Trail

Gross Motor:

Theme: Native American Indian Trail
Purpose: We have set up a series of gross motor tasks for the children - simulating a trek through the country side including mountains and streams. The tasks will help them to develop body awareness, motor planning, bi-lateral coordination, crossing midline, strengthening, sequencing, eye-hand coordination and oral-motor control. In addition, it provides opportunities for sensory input (tactile, vestibular and proprioceptive) and a sense of accomplishment.

Tasks:
1. Ride a inflatable horse
2. Climb up a mountain
3. Beat a large drum 5-10x with alternating hands
4. Walk down the stairs
5. Get on rocking bolster and simulate paddling a canoe
6. Finally blow feathers into a teepee

Fine Motor:
Native American Necklaces:

The purpose of this activity is to work on two handed skills, crossing midline, fine pincer grasp and sequencing.

Native American Vest:

The purpose of this activity is to work on snipping with scissors to make fringe and glue different icons to decorate the vest for tactile input.
Indian Headdress and Corn Muffin Cooking Activity:
The Indian Headdress will work on snipping skills and hand development. The cooking activity will work on tactile input, to handed skills, crossing midline and sequencing.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Monster Mash

Gross Motor
This is the Motor Room Plan for the next two weeks October 20th through October 31st.

Theme: Monster Mash
Purpose: We have set up a series of gross motor tasks for the children - simulating a Halloween fun filled theme. The tasks will help them to develop body awareness, motor planning, bilateral coordination, strength, sequencing, and eye-hand coordination. In addition, it provides opportunities for sensory input (tactile, vestibular and proprioception) and a sense of accomplishment.

Tasks:
1. Follow the skeleton foot prints and “mash the monsters”
2. Climb to the top of the house and jump to give Mr. Bone’s (the skeleton)and give him a high five.
3. Slide down into the spider web and find a spider.
4. Toss the spider into the spider web.
5. Blow a spider into the spider web.


Fine Motor:

Bats: The focus of this activity was to participate in messy sensory play through finger painting with the pudding. All of the children were encouraged to use functional reach and isolation in order to paint the bats with pudding and decorate them with Coco Puffs Cereal.




Big Green Monster: The focus of this activity is to work on the features of the face and where they are located such as the eyes, nose mouth ears and hair.


Monday, October 20, 2008

Motor Room Fall Harvest cont.

Here are some pictures from the Fall Harvest themed Motor Room the week of October 6.

Scarecrow Fine Motor Project

Fine Motor Activities:

Scarecrow: Some of the children worked with the song “the Hokey Pokey” to develop overall body awareness to locate body parts such as the legs, arms head and so on. They worked to producing a whole body of a scarecrow by appropriately placing straw on the feet, hands, and head. The children also talked about facial features such as eyes, nose and mouth and where to properly place these parts on the scare crow’s face.


Scarecrow: Some of the children worked on textures soft and rough. The children had to stuff the scarecrow by putting in both rough and soft texture (cotton and shredded paper).They used the glue to paste his facial features on. The focus for this activity was to develop awareness of where the eyes, nose, and mouth are on the face and to develop correct top down orientation.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Fall Harvest

Gross Motor:



Theme: Fall Harvest
Purpose: We have set up a series of gross motor tasks for the children - simulating a country orchard for playing in fall leaves and picking apples. The tasks will help them to develop body awareness, motor planning, bilateral coordination, strength, sequencing, and eye-hand coordination. In addition, it provides opportunities for sensory input (tactile, vestibular and proprioception) and a sense of accomplishment.

Tasks:
1. Crawl through a tunnel and find an apple.
2. Climb the "tree" (stairs) and reach and put the apple back on the tree.
3. Slide down the "tree" into the pile of leaves.
4. Picking apples and tossing them into the basket.
Fine Motor:

This week's activity was to make a tree and paint with chocolate pudding. The overall focus of this activity was to promote finger strengthening and to work with tactile input through finger painting with pudding.
Some of the kids worked with tweezers to encourage muscle strengthening and finger control. The objective was to pick up the leaves (but only with the tweezers) and decorate the trees with the leaves that they picked up.

Other children ripped the paper ( to promote two handed skills and finger strengthening) and pasted the pieces on as the leaves.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Welcome to Our Motor Room!

Our first theme of the year is "Summer Olympics". Our Motor Room is set-up to work on a variety of skills related to the theme. In addition, we planned two fine motor activities to go along with the theme. Enjoy our pictures and descriptions of the activities!

Gross Motor

Theme: Summer Olympics
Purpose: We have set up a series of gross motor tasks for the children - simulating (a bit of a stretch) sports from the summer Olympics - gymnastics, swimming and basketball. The tasks will help them to develop body awareness, motor planning, bilateral coordination, strength, sequencing, and eye-hand coordination. In addition, it provides opportunities for sensory input (tactile, vestibular and proprioception) and a sense of accomplishment.

Tasks: (start the Olympic music)
1. Jump 10 times on small trampoline
2. Jump the "hurdles" across the mat with colored squares
3. Climb the stairs and slide down into the swimming pool (of balls)
4. Throw the variety of balls into the barrel "basket."

Fine Motor
First Week Fine Motor Activity:

Olympic Rings
The purpose of this activity is to work on hand strengthening (some ripped the paper and some used scissors), the pincer grasp, matching colors and working with tactile input with glue.
Second Week Fine Motor Activity:

Olympic Torch


The purpose of this activity is to work with messy texture, paper mache, and hand strengthening (some ripped the paper, some used scissors).

Look at some of the pictures of kids participating in the fun and games!