New and Improved Rainbow-Making work

In my last post I wrote about my Make-a-Rainbow activity.  Almost immediately after I put it out I thought of another thing to add to it to make it more interesting as well as a better fine-motor activity for the children.  Today between my morning and afternoon session I made the changes I wanted to. 

First, I cut the pipe cleaners I had been using into shorter pieces.  I also cut the florist foam piece in half again.  I had noticed after observing students working with this activity that the full-length pipe-cleaners easily became bent thus creating a lop-sided and bumpy rainbow.  In addition to those changes, I added a bowl with pony beads:  10 beads of each of the 6 colors.  Now the children will poke one end of the pipe cleaner into the foam, thread the 10 corresponding colored beads onto it, and then bend it into an arch and poke the other end into the foam, creating one color band of the rainbow.  The rainbow pictured below was completed by one of my afternoon students just this afternoon.  I forgot to take a photo of how the activity is set up on the tray so I'll try to explain.  The small white bowl holds the colored beads and the clear plastic box holds the pipe cleaners once they are removed from the foam.

 

 

I like this variation much better.  It requires more concentration and focus and helps the children refine their fine motor control and increase their attention.

Comments

[sildenafil citrate]

The other day I was randomly looking over my Amazon profile, and found a list I made of products that help build fine-motor skills in babies, toddlers, and children. I wrote it in 2007 when Jake was 5 and in still in Occupational Therapy - we were really focusing at the time on his fine motor skills. I owe a lot of what I know about such things to our lovely O.T. Rachael, and to many of the books I have listed to the right.

I think a lot of people would be surprised how easy it is to start including fine-motor activities in playtime . . . especially since so many really fun things help to build those skills! Many of you are probably already doing some of these activities with your children and not realizing how great they are for development i think so.

[DSH]

I am hoping to put this out on our shelf tomorrow. I hope the children enjoy it and aren't to harsh with it.

[Melissa]

I love this! I'm going to try to find our Eric Carle rainbow book to go along with it when I introduce it to O. Thanks for another great idea!

[Heather]

Thank you for sharing all your wonderful ideas! My students have benefitted on more than one occasion. I am adding this one to the list :)

[Shanelle]

This is fantastic! I love how adding the beads makes the rainbow an "abacus" of sorts.