Easter Basket Craft

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Ness

Today I am thrilled to welcome Krissy of B-Inspired Mama to the blog. Krissy’s site is full of creative kids activities, fun family recipes and the hugely popular “Mouths of Moms” series where Moms share their real-life experiences and chat about everyday parenting issues. Today Krissy is sharing a fun Easter basket craft that incorporates fine motor skills practice with ribbon weaving. Thank you Krissy!

Easter Basket Craft

Are your kids ready for the big bunny to come? Why not let them make their own special Easter basket for the big day? Even the littlest can practice their fine motor skills and enjoy the sensory experience of this Easter basket craft. Here’s what we did…

Kids Ribbon Weaving Easter Basket Craft

Supplies:

open weave metal or wicker basket (We found ours at Dollar Tree.)
a variety of ribbon, string, and twine

Steps:

1. Cut the ribbon and string into various lengths about 2 feet long or so.

2. Leaving a few inch “tail” inside the basket, weave the ribbon/string in and out of the holes in the basket, working your way around the basket. When you come to an end, tie another ribbon/string on and keep weaving.

3. Secure any “tail” ends by tying or even with a dab of glue if necessary.

4. Set it out the Easter eve and wait for some treats!

We did this Easter basket craft when we had friends over for a long afternoon. Every kiddo, ages 4 through 10, loved it and was able to make a beautiful basket all their own.

Have you done any Easter crafts yet? Check out B-Inspired Mama if you’re looking for some Easter inspiration!

Krissy is a former art teacher turned full time mama of 3. Blogging at B-Inspired Mama allows her to connect other moms with simple ideas for kid-friendly crafts, easy recipes, learning fun, and creative parenting tips. Follow along through Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Looking for more Easter activities and crafts? Here are a few of our other fun Easter posts.

Water Painting on a Chalkboard – a Pre-Writing Activity

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Ness

Here’s a fun pre-writing exercise that I set up for R (3). It was quick and simple to put together and R absolutely loved it. I was inspired by this post at Teach Preschool. It looked like fun and I decided to add some number and letter recognition to the activity since R is all about letters and numbers at the moment!

YOU WILL NEED:

A chalkboard – this is actually optional. If you don’t have an easel or chalkbard, you could simply draw with the chalk on a path or your drive-way.
Chalk
A paintbrush
A container of water

I began by using the chalk to write some letters and numbers on the board. I showed R how to dip the paintbrush into the water and then paint over the letters and numbers with the water. Here he is painting over the “R” that I wrote.

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Fine Motor Skills Practise with Play Dough

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Ness

R(3) wanted to play with our Play Dough today. We haven’t brought it out in a long time. I spend so much time looking for new and exciting activities for R to try that sometimes I forget about the more “ordinary” things like Play Dough which is a shame because we always have so much fun with it and it has so many benefits:

It’s a fantastic sensory play experience
Strengthens fingers, hands and wrists
Develops hand / eye co-ordination
It’s great for developing fine motor skills if you add elements like cutters, popsicle sticks or tooth picks
It is a truly open ended play experience, sparking imagination and creativity
It can help to develop language skills as you discuss colours, shapes, textures, the items being created etc

One day I will make my own home made play dough but today we used the store-bought variety. R received a set of 10 colours for his last birthday. After it has been used, I store it in zip lock bags and it seems to keep for ages when it has been stored like this, much longer than if it is stored in the plastic tubs that you buy it in. Consequently, we just never seem to run out of it and I haven’t had any need to make our own yet.

This is what I put out for R this morning. As you can see, we don’t really care about keeping the play dough colours separated in this house! I love that big glob of orange/red/yellow/pink. It reminds me of an Indian Sari. I laid out a tray with som googly eyes, coloured toothpicks, and some coloured pasta that I made for a previous project.

R quickly got to work, adding bits and pieces, declaring he was making a porcupine.

He was very particular about exactly where each toothpick should be placed.

R then declared that the toothpicks were candles on a birthday cake and that he had made me a special green porcupine birthday cake. I quickly grabbed a plastic knife so that he could cut our birthday cake and we could eat some! What a great opportunity for some fine motor skills development and cutting practise! R has been really keen to start cutting his own food at mealtimes but handling a fork and knife is tricky for little hands. This was great practise. He concentrated so intensley on what he was doing and was so proud of himself when he cut that first piece.

“Here’s your piece Mummy!”

After we enjoyed or pieces of cake, R rolled the play dough into logs so he could do some more cutting. (Look at those hand muscles getting a work out! So essential for the all-important pincer grip.)

Then the cutting began. Look at that concentration!

R was fascinated by the pattern on the cut pieces, created by the serrated edge of the knife.

This activity held R’s attention for longer than anything has in quite a while and he played happily for almost an hour. He learnt a new skill (cutting with a knife), developed his fine motor skills and hand eye co-ordination, he added some new words to his vocabulary (serrated and serration), and used his imagination. Perhaps most importantly, his self esteem soared when he used the knife so proficiently and his smile was beaming.

What simple, back-to-basics activities do your kids love? Let’s chat in the comments.

If this is your first time visiting One Perfect Day – welcome! If you like what you have found, please join us on our Facebook page or follow me on Pinterest. We are always sharing new ideas to play, learn, create and explore.

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Easy DIY fine motor skills activity

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Ness

This Montessori style fine motor skills activity is so quick and simple to put together. Does your family eat cereal? Does your family eat macaroni? Yes? Then you have everything you need to make this activity and you won’t have to outlay a cent!

(That odd marking on R’s hand is the remnants of one of those temporary tattoos. I think this one was once a frog on a skateboard!)

To make this, I simply took an empty cereal box and pierced some holes in a random pattern over one side of the box. I used a pair of scissors but you could use anything you have on hand such as a skewer. I tried to vary the width of the holes a little. The idea is for the child to push the macaroni through the holes so I made some holes quite large, thus making it very easy to slide the macaroni through, and for other holes I kept the fit nice and snug to create a bit more of a challenge. After you have pierced the holes in the box, pour some uncooked macaroni into a bowl and voila! Instant game.

R was 2.5 when we did this. He really enjoyed it and his attention was held for at least fifteen minutes – no mean feat for him when he was that age! I just love the look of concentration on his face in this picture. He’s also doing this with his non-dominant hand in this picture which I was very interested to observe, especially given the fact that this was the first time we’d tried anything like this.

This was such a simple activity to whip up in no time. Just the thing to occupy a little one when you need a quick few minutes to get something done. This activity encourages fine motor skills including the all-important pincer grip, hand / eye co-ordination, concentration skills, and patience. All that from a cereal box! Who knew?

After 15 minutes of deep concentration, R was done, and he decided the uncooked macaroni could be put to much better use as an afternoon snack!

Finally it was all over. Literally. All over the table, that is!

If this is your first time visiting One Perfect Day – welcome! If you like what you have found, please join us on our Facebook page. We are always sharing new ideas to play, learn, create and explore.