Tag Archives: fine motor skills

“Mini chef in the kitchen” 2- Jus de lapin (carrot-banana-mandarin smoothie)

Posted on April 30, 2015 | Leave a comment

In the “mini chef in the kitchen” series, today we are preparing a healthy fruit smoothie to beat the heat.

Giving the juice a creative name, attracts your kids attention and stimulates their curiosity. There is no way they won’t try it especially if they are picky eaters like my son.

“jus de lapin” or rabbit juice because it contains carrots and has a bright orange color!

You will need

1 large carrot
1 big banana
juice of 3 mandarines
half cup ice (optional)
1 tsp honey (optional)

Mix all and blend for 2-3 minutes until smooth and frothy.

My son is not fan of sweet taste, i didn’t add the honey since the mandarin were not very sour.

If the fruits are already cold or some frozen, you can skip adding ice. I put two colorful ice sticks for fun and to keep it chilled.

This activity provides your kids with plenty of opportunities to learn. Click on benefits of cooking with your kids to know more about it.

To add more fun and encourage Nady to have the whole smoothie i prepared moustache cut out and insert it in the straw. Click here for the printable file.

There are endless options for smoothies, use the favorite fruits of your kids, or even introduce some other veggies like celery, spinach or cucumber and make the green giant.

If you like this post give it some likes and shares to spread the joy. Don’t forget to like marmite et ponpon facebook page and follow on twitter. More interesting posts are yet to come.

Fantastick art

Posted on September 22, 2014 | 6 comments

Children enjoy having a go at arts and crafts activities, especially cutting, gluing and sticking. If your child is not old enough to use scissors and glue, it’s a brilliant activity for collage. All you need to do is tape a clear contact paper with the sticky side up, give him colorful paper cut outs, pompoms, wiggling eyes, feathers…. (anything you find in your creative play box) and watch him making shapes and getting creative. Today Fouad, (Nady’s friend) is participating as well. Hourray amigo!

This activity is amazing for fine motor skills as for teaching geometric shapes, colors, textures and introducing new words… It’s important to know that your child’s messy art represents a huge milestone in their physical development. In the space of one year your child has gone from not even knowing they have hands to being able to cut or glue or just stick, it needs enough pressure, and fine motricity skills. That’s incredible!

As children get older, arts and crafts help them to socialize with others, they get together to play and create. It’s no secret, doing such activities in groups (or at least tow kids) provides a positive outlet for children to share, socialize and express their emotions.

it’s an open ended activity, you start by something and ends up by playing other totally different games. For instance, Nady was enjoying the paper rain, (throwing on him the small pieces of colored papers as if it’s rain) and imitating the rain sound!

After sticking for long time, the boys got enough (and it’s normal after 2 hours) they switched to basketball, and left behind those two beautiful pieces.

6 Comments

Posted in way to play

Tagged art, art and craft, blog, clear contact paper, creativity, DIY, fine motor skills, glue, jaymmy, kids play, marmite et ponpon, stick

clothespin airplanes – kids crafts

Posted on September 11, 2014 | 2 comments

We travel a lot, therefor airplanes became familiar to my son who is very enthusiastic for. Today we decided to travel somewhere in our imagination using clothespin, popsicles sticks and pompoms.

Simple and easy activity (doesn’t need too much preparation) to strengthen his motor skills, enrich his vocabulary and widen his imagination.

We were bored at home, and i wanted to create a last minute simple activity to make him busy. But i didn’t want the fun to end fast. So we started by sorting the colors by naming them and the objects we are using before we create the planes. Very simple way to teach your kid the colors and adding new words to his vocab.

Putting a popsicle stick inside the clothespin might seem easy, but for small hands and tiny muscles it needs fine motricity to pinch the clothespin. With a little help from mommy, here are the wings!

To make it more realistic, stick pompoms on each side of the pretending wings. Sticking is an interesting activity to nady. We kept on sticking and removing the pompoms for a while.

Here are our lovely colorful planes!

Actually Nady enjoyed crafting the planes, but he didn’t want to pretend traveling in them. He was pointing at the sky for real planes. Well i don’t blame him 🙂

2 Comments

Posted in DIY, way to play

Tagged activity, blog, clothespin, craft, DIY, fine motor skills, jaymmy, kids, marmite et ponpon, pompom, popsicle sticks, way to play

Homemade colored sand – fine motor skills and messy sensory fun

Posted on May 5, 2014 | 1 comment

Homemade sand for hot days (or rainy, but it’s not the case in doha), when it’s not convenient to play outdoor.

Very easy and low-budget activity. All you need is cracked wheat and colors ( i always recommend wilton icing gel). One kilo bag of cracked wheat needs one tsp of the coloring gel. Mix well until the color is even and let it dry.

To kick off the fun, I put them in a container and hide the small animals for Nady to dig in.

Children have always been intrigued by sand play. They dig in, pour it, enjoy the feeling, pretend with it and explore how it moves.

Sand play is open-ended, there is no right way to play with, it stretches the imagination of the kid, provides a soothing sensory experience and it’s an excellent avenue for children to learn physical, cognitive and social skills.

Children are not born with a know how to play, parents should teach them! that’s why at the beginning children just observe before starting to explore.

What does this feel like when I touch it? What does this sound like when I squeeze it? What will happen if I push this or pull that? Crawl over there? Pull myself up on this?

Get down on the floor with your child. You are the ultimate plaything, and any activity will seem more fun if your child can share it with you. Talk to him while you play and you’ll help boost his language skills. Let your child choose how to play, you can suggest new things or present new options, but he should be the boss.

Now it’s time for messy play! It’s an important part of early education:

Physical development: Children will be given the tools to develop and practice fine motor skills and eye hand coordination, such as pouring and spooning and will provide opportunities for children to compare textures such as smooth, rough, hard and soft.

Communication and language development: During messy play, children will be given many opportunities to speak and listen.

Personal, emotional and social development: Messy Play is designed with children’s natural curiosity in mind. It encourages a positive approach to new experiences. There is no “right” way for children to do messy play. This builds self-confidence and self-esteem. They develop concentration, problem-solving and planning.

Intellectual development: Children will investigate, explore, design and create leading to a better understanding of the world around them. They will learn to group and classify, arrange items in a logical order, identify and match and understand cause and effect.

Mathematical development: The children will sort objects, fill containers and create patterns.

Creative development: Children are given endless opportunities with a variety of materials to build imagination and creativity. Through sensory experiences, they are able to respond to what they see, hear, feel, touch and smell. They will express their feelings and thoughts through color, texture, shapes and forms in two and three dimensions.

It was a successful fun activity, Nady was extremely happy and enjoying every second! we played for 90 minutes non stop without loosing interest or getting fussy.

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Posted in DIY, way to play

Tagged blog, colored sand, colors, cracked wheat sand, DIY, fine motor skills, homemade snad, how to make sand at home, jaymmy, marmite et ponpon, motor skills, sensory play, way to play

kids spring/Easter crafts, yellow flowers (DIY- step by step)

Posted on March 31, 2014 | 3 comments

The color festival is still on! Celebrate the spring and pre-easter season with your kids. Develop their fine motor skills, and teach them colors.

My boy is learning the spring season and the yellow color at the nursery. I thought of DIY yellow paper flowers. Why not? It could be the table centerpiece at Easter. Lets have fun!

First we need a vase. Empty cheese jar was an excellent idea. We decorated it with colorful japanese washi tape.

The minute I set down the material on the table, Nady showed an unbelievable excitement.

You will be surprised how much you can do with just papers; Pinwheel daffodil, marigold, daisy, tulip and geranium, for this time.

Follow me step by step on how we do the pinwheel daffodil.

Marigold:

Daisy, tulip and geranium. Click on flowers cut outs for a high resolution file.

Green straws for the stems.

Et voila!

Simply gorgeous! Nady was so happy, contemplating the beauty of the flowers.

So excited, he started to collect the flowers to make a bouquet.

Nady’s reaction to this activity was unexpected. I was extremely happy from his response. Crafting today was extremely beautiful and fun. He grabbed the vase and started to fill it with the flowers.