The children have been bringing in their family photos – and we are making houses for our families – using a range of fine motor skills, such as cutting, which are important to practise often. The children traced the house shape, cut along the lines, (mostly) remembered not to cut the fold – then pasted their families in , decorated their house, punched a hole in and threaded string to hang them. Lots of steps to follow, developing their ability to sequence a task and to develop their short term memory, and lots of fine motor practise! Focussing on their families was extremely motivating for all the children, and lead to conversations about where the photo was taken, who was in it, what they were doing and lots more.
That looks like a great task.
It was also an activity that some children were keen to repeat the next session – which was interesting – they seemed to enjoy mastering the fold and cut – the “magic” of producing an interactive shape, one with a “hinge” maybe? One child who had had trouble not cutting across the fold had another go today – and still had trouble – which she was disappointed about – but asked what she wanted to do, opted to have another go – resilience in action! she also worked out that you could fix it with stickytape – less elegant but still effective……