Valentines Practical Life & Fine Motor Skills

Simple Snack Preparation & Vase Filling Activities

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Welcome to day 5 of We Love Valentines Week! 

Make practical life & fine motor skills fun and interesting to practice

This morning I planned for us to use practical life skills to also work on our fine motor skills. There is a good amount of fine motor skills needed to prepare snacks. This type of hand work and concentration are very important for developing fine motor skills.

Also, Liam seems more in tune with real work with real outcomes, the type of work I do everyday around the house. I chose simple snacks and a fun little vase filling activity to help foster his independence as well as his fine motor skills. I thought he would make us a snack but instead he wanted to make Daddy lunch. I was pleased with his thoughtfulness as well.

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Snack Preparation Fine Motor Skills Activity

*Please supervise your children to the level you feel comfortable. Only you know what is best for your child.*

I set out several different snacks with various skills practice for us this morning. Our tasks were to scoop melon with a melon baller (cantaloupe is tougher than watermelon), prepare heart-shaped jelly sandwiches, slice cheese and lastly skewer cheese and fruit (dried and fresh). I had sweet little plastic toothpicks with hearts for Valentines Day.

We started by scooping the melon with a melon baller. Clearly watermelon is easier but we had lots of melon! I helped him a bit, but he spent plenty of time practicing his fine motor skills on his own and filled a small bowl.

Next it was time to spread the jelly on the bread. First he spooned some onto one slice. I showed him how to hold his knife and he was very meticulous about spreading the jelly everywhere. He continued to put more on and spread it around evenly. This is great fine motor skills and hand work and so useful! Now he can make his own jelly sandwiches. Practical life skills like these are so motivating for young children!

Time to make the hearts with cookie cutters!

On to slicing the cheese. I had a slice started for him. I showed how I cut it in half and then into quarters. I invited him to do the same. We did some hand over hand ,but he was able to use his awesome fine motor skills to do it all on his own!

Time to skewer the fruits and cheese! He skewered the melon all on one and then chose the dried cherries and cheese for the other, alternating a cherry with a chunk of cheese! Lots of great hand work and fine motor skills go into skewering foods. Different textures provide different resistances that also offer challenging aspects to the preparation!

Final presentation!

Flower Arranging Vase Filling Fine Motor Skills Activity

Our second activity was to have fun with flower arranging and vase filling. It’s a fun and easy practical life activity with fine motor skills work built right in to it! He took one look at the invitation and said “I know what to do with this”, and he really did!

Presentation for daddy!

Fine Motor Fridays Blog Hop

Please be sure to visit everyone!

Broken Hearts:  Valentines Cutting Practice from School Time Snippets 

Valentines Heart Mobile with Fine Motor Practice from Powerful Mothering

Snowball Pick-Up & Transfer from Stir the Wonder

Easy Shrinky Dinks Ribbon Pull Toy from Lalymom