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.

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!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com