2-4 Years Motor Skills

Keep the learning going all summer long with our free activities at Camp Learning Resources and earn your merit badges! Print and color your merit badges as you follow our weekly learning activities!

Coloring is not only a fun activity, but it also has many benefits for children, including:

• Development of fine motor skills: Coloring requires using small muscles in the hands and fingers, helping to develop fine motor skills.
• Improves focus and concentration: Coloring can help children focus and concentrate on a specific task, which can be helpful for their academic performance.
• Reduces stress and anxiety: Coloring can be a calming activity, helping reduce stress and anxiety in children and adults.

Encourage your child to use their favorite colors and get creative with their coloring. You can also use this printable to talk about springtime and narwhals, teaching your child about nature and animals. The Printable Spring Narwhal Coloring Page from Learning Resources is an excellent activity for children of all ages. It promotes the development of fine motor skills, improves focus and concentration, and helps to reduce stress and anxiety. Download the printable today and encourage your child to get creative with their coloring, spending quality time together as a family.

Valentine's Pattern Block Activity is a fun and engaging way to incorporate math and problem-solving skills into the holiday. These activity mats feature different Valentine's Day-themed pictures, such as hearts, flowers, and cupids. To complete the activity, students can use pattern blocks to create the pictures on the mats.

Valentine's Day Printable Fine Motor Mats are a fun and engaging way to incorporate math and fine motor skills practice into the holiday. These mats feature different Valentine's Day-themed pictures, such as hearts, flowers, and cupids. To complete the activity, students can use pom poms to create the images on the mats.

Boil 3 cups of water. While your water boils, place your pipe cleaners in spectrum order and shape then into a rainbow. Note: unless your heatproof container is deep and wide enough, you will probably have to trim your pipe cleaners down to almost half.

To bind the rainbow together, use a white pipe cleaner as a “cloud” on either end.

Once your rainbows are shaped, tie a kitchen string or thread around the top pipe cleaner. This is how you will hang it over the Borax solution.

With some probable trial and error, tie your rainbow around your dowel and hang it from your heatproof jar. You want to make sure that the rainbow will not touch the sides of the jar or the other rainbow. This needs to be true when the liquid is poured into the jar, as your rainbows need to be submersed. This is where using a glass measure cup was helpful. The three-cup marking made it clear where to hang the rainbow.

Remove your dry rainbow for the heatproof jar and have it at the ready. Scoop out 9 tablespoons of Borax into a separate, heatproof bowl and pour in the three cups of boiling water (it proved easier to stir in a big bowl, then transfer the solution to the measuring cup). Stir with a metal spoon until Borax is dissolved. The solution will be cloudy.

With your rainbows attached to your dowels, lower them into the solution. Again, you want to make sure they are not touching the sides of the jar or each other.

Let your rainbows hang overnight. It is important to NOT touch them or move the jar around. Your jar must remain in an undisturbed state. After a few hours, crystals will begin to form.

And now the true reveal: the next morning. Loads of crystals!

Pull out the rainbows slowly, and then give them a quick rinse.

The results are amazing. The kids will be so impressed!

Step 1: 

Evenly distribute the rice into Ziploc bags (in increments of cups). About 2 cups of rice are pictured in each bag.

Step 2:

Measure 1 tablespoon of vinegar per 2 cups of rice in each bag.

Step 3:

Plan out the desired colors and add about 5 drops of food coloring. Add more color in order to achieve brighter results.

Step 4:

Carefully secure the Ziplock bag, shake and spread/mix the color and rice evenly with your fingers.

Step 5:

Set the rice out on a plate or baking tray to dry for about 24 hours. The color won't mix if you decide to add the rice before it’s fully dry. The only thing is your hands might smell a little like vinegar.

In the meantime, gather the supplies below for a St. Patrick’s Day sensory bin.- A bin or sensory table- Learning Resources Tri Grip Tongs -Learning Resources Squeezy Tweezers-Gold coins-Glitter four leaf clovers and stars-St. Patrick’s Day goodies found at your local dollar store or party store (green metallic confetti and green cups/leprechaun hats are a great option)- You can even add green pom poms for a different texture.

Step 6:

Add the rainbow rice into the bin carefully. I added one color at a time and gathered it in layers after each pour. Below you can see a side angle. Admire its beauty before being mixed indefinitely!

Step 7:

Choose how much or how little of the goodies and accessories you’d like to add to the St. Patrick’s Day sensory bin. I think it’s always fun to “hunt” for items in the rice so don’t be afraid to only add a few items.

Using the Learning Resources Tri Grip Tongs and Learning Resources Squeezy Tweezers to scoop rice into the cup to collect coins in the leprechaun’s hat can be the perfect fine motor activity. I love how perfect they are for a wide age range of primary learners. Lucky for you, there are so many ways you can modify this to meet the needs of your learners. Rather than simply thinking of it as a St. Patrick’s Day sensory bin with holiday goodies to improve fine motor skills, you can easily incorporate it as a number/letter seek and find, or even sight word and addition and subtraction math fact center. Or, save the rainbow rice and use it from season to season!

Do your kids love setting up pretend ‘tea parties’ with their dolls and stuffed animals? My four-year-old will happily sit playing with a setup like that for over an hour, so we are always on the lookout for fun ways to put a seasonal twist on the tea parties. That’s why we were delighted when Learning Resources® released two festive kitchen set products: Hot Cocoa Time! and Santa’s Cookies.

What’s Included?

Each set comes with a fun range of pieces to ensure that the play remains open-ended. The Santa’s Cookies 12-piece set includes a cookie sheet complete with rolled-out dough, pre-cut cookies, a neat suction-style cookie cutter, rolling pin and spatula, plate, glass of milk, and cute dry-erase note to Santa.

The Hot Cocoa set includes a big brewing pot, two cups, plates and spoons, a hot cocoa pot, cookies, and marshmallows. All items are sturdy and easy to clean, which is always a bonus when it comes to toys for kids!

Combining the Fun for a Festive Cookies & Cocoa Party

My preschooler had been playing with both sets separately, but I knew she would love to set up her festive party for her dolls and unicorns using the sets together.

We spread out a pretend snow tablecloth, and she got to work propping up her little friends in the chairs. She was chatting to them the whole time about where they were going to sit and how much fun they would have.

Once everyone was seated, she got to work taking their orders. I loved listening to her asking her ‘friends’ what they wanted, and then she would make up an order for them. This was a great way for her to develop her vocabulary and work on some simple numeracy.

She would count how many scoops of cocoa powder to add, how many marshmallows, or how many of each type of cookie. If your child is older, they could always write down the orders on the dry-erase Santa’s note board.

My preschooler was also able to develop descriptive shape-based language. I would ask her to find a shape with x number of sides or a curved edge. She was so careful and sure to give her unicorns and her doll exactly what they ordered!

The tools which come with the sets are perfect for helping children to develop their fine motor skills. My daughter was careful to scoop, roll and serve, making sure not to ‘spill’ anything on our ‘fancy’ tablecloth!

After all of her friends had their orders, they sat enjoying their festive party together. We put on some fun seasonal music, and it was a special moment of quality time. It’s always so magical when the child can lead the play and direct the conversation. It’s amazing how much confidence they gain from the opportunity to let their imaginations drive the activity!

Lucy Baker is a Mom of two (4 & 8 years old) passionate about creative play and hands-on learning. She firmly believes in providing children with the opportunity to learn through play and being part of their play journey as a parent. See more of her creative play ideas and process art projects on Instagram @findthelittlemind, and over on her blog, Find the Little Mind.

I love the start of the new school year when apples, acorns, and Fall leaves fill our days of play and learning. Sensory bins are a great way to let preschoolers explore these themes while developing essential skills. In this blog series, I will share three fun and simple sensory bases for apple-themed bins, which are perfect for use in the classroom or at home. These blogs include one of our favorite Learning Resources® products this time of year, the Attribute Apples™! The set includes 27 apples sorted by five attributes, size, color, and physical features (stem, leaf, and worm). Perfect for adding a healthy splash of play and learning to a sensory bin! The second sensory bin in this series uses one of the best sensory bases of all… water! 

• Learning Resources® Apple Attributes 
  
• Container (here, you can see us using a small dish bin from Dollar Tree, but under-bed storage containers work great for bigger groups) 
  
• Water 
  
• Fine motor tools (we loved using the Twisty Dropper™ and Gator Grabber Tweezers™ with this bin, both come in the Helping Hands Fine Motor Tool Set™) 
  
• A few small bowls and dishcloths for drying 

The Set-up 
Just add some water to the bin, throw in the apples, put out the tools, bowls, and dishcloth, and you are good to go! 

Any sensory bin involving water always leads to some form of scrubbing for my four-year-old. She studied the different apples and decided that she needed to give the worms inside them an extra good scrub! 

I love how the apples have so many different attributes that can be sorted. This led to lots of hands-on analysis and discussions as the scrubbing was happening with her hands and fingers. The Twisty Dropper was used lots to make little ‘apple showers.’ 

I left this set-up very open-ended and instead of directing my preschooler towards using the materials in a certain way, I just let her choose how to use them. I was not surprised when she said she wanted to start making me some apple soup. She asked me what size bowl I’d like and what type of apples I’d like in my bowl of soup. My little one gave me recommendations and was sure to tell me to avoid the worm soup! 

Her little hands were constantly working hard, which was great for her fine motor development. We also added plenty of early numeracy language, such as numbers and sizes. It was very sweet watching her so carefully transferring the water into my soup bowl and being sure to find all the yellow apples to make it extra sweet and yummy. 

After she had served a few bowls of soup, we started to talk about how much each bowl should cost, which was another numeracy link. Then we gave all the apples a final scrub and dry, before closing the soup kitchen. I love how versatile and durable the Attribute Apples are! Next time, we will add a drop of green food coloring and some dish soap bubbles to the water. 

Lucy Baker is a Mom of two (4 & 8 years old) passionate about creative play and hands-on learning. She firmly believes in providing children with the opportunity to learn through play and being part of their play journey as a parent. See more of her creative play ideas and process art projects on Instagram @findthelittlemind, and over on her blog, Find the Little Mind.