Motor Skills

Hot Cocoa Time! - Curl up with some hot cocoa! This cozy set is perfect for little ones looking to warm up on chilly days. The carafe, mugs, and chocolate container create the ideal recipe for imaginative play. Stir in as much chocolate as you like and top it all off with some fluffy marshmallows. Fresh-baked cookies are the perfect snack to enjoy with your toasty beverage.

Santa's Cookies Set - Get into the holiday spirit with this imaginative set of toy Christmas cookies just for Santa! Kids can add a touch of realism to winter role play with Santa's Cookies from Learning Resources. This 12-piece set of fun play food includes everything kids for pretend baking fun, from cut-out cookies to a rolling pin, spatula, baking sheet, and more! When their play Christmas cookies are ready, kids can serve them up to Santa with a plate, glass of "milk," and write-and-wipe note that helps build essential imaginative skills. The perfect addition to any toy kitchen set, this play cookie set also helps kids master hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills with pieces just right for little hands. Each piece of play food wipes clean when playtime's done and is durable enough for years of holiday play kitchen fun.

Pocket Animal Playsets - Bring the world of animal adventures to your stocking stuffers this holiday with the Pocket Animal Playsets from Learning Resources! Within each of this set's three pocket playsets, your kids will find a world of animals in their natural habitats—explore the world beneath the waves with ocean animals, travel back in time to prehistory with dinosaurs, or head down to the farm with farm animals! Each pocket playset comes with ten realistic animal counters ready for imaginative adventures, sensory bin toys, and more! These small toys for kids pack everything they need into one compact package, including storage—when adventures are done, animal counters pack inside their boxes for easy clean-up. The Pocket Animal Playsets make an easy stocking stuffer for kids—split up the playsets among four different stockings, or give the entire set as one larger gift!

New Sprouts Fix It! - Play toolset encourages early imaginative play to provide a tactile and visual learning experience. Encouraging imaginative play with these chunky, toddler-safe tools made from durable, soft plastic. Includes saw, hammer screwdriver, wrench, drill, and toolbox. The realistically detailed drill makes sound! Perfect for helping little learners build fine motor skills!

Rise & Shine Diner - Wake up and smell the imaginative learning fun! Kids start their day with restaurant pretend play every time they serve up pretend breakfasts from the Rise & Shine Diner from Learning Resources. This deluxe diner playset includes 23 play food versions of all your morning favorites, from waffles and pancakes to fried eggs, fruit, and more, as well as the, pretend utensils needed to "cook" and "eat" them! Though this realistic play food looks good enough to eat, it's even more fun to serve—the Rise & Shine Diner's restaurant playset comes with everything kids need to open their play diner, including a write-and-wipe menu, placemat, and guest check that add a touch of authenticity to play restaurant role play. Each piece of play food wipes clean when playtime's done and is durable enough for years of play restaurant fun.

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Benefits of using fine motor tools:

Handy Scoopers: These unique tools are a handy way to build the muscles needed for scissor cutting! Tools feature translucent scoops and easy-to-grip handles for developing fine motor skills. Holes in the scoops allow for catch-and-release fun during water play.

Build up little hand muscles: Helps develop eye-hand coordination by grabbing small manipulatives or snacks with the Handy Scoopers.

Sensory Integration: Use the Handy Scoopers in a sandbox or water table to discover how the different substances sift through the holes of the Handy Scoopers.

Gator Grabber Tweezers: Sized for little hands and great for developing the pincer grasp! Working on fine motor skills is fun when children get to use an Alligator to grip objects.

Fine Motor: As students pick up objects with the tweezers, they are working on motor planning and eye-hand coordination (visual-motor integration) and refining the manual skills needed for writing, drawing, and daily living.

Sensory Integration: Students who are hypersensitive to textures can participate in tactile play using tweezers to hold and move objects.

Self-Help: Incorporate puppet-like conversations to enhance communication and social interactions. Gator (tweezers) can speak to or try to gobble up the other person, increasing direct contact with another

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Are you excited about the fall? Cooler weather, changing colors, and leaves and seeds on the ground make for a great time to get outside and explore nature. Bring a nature inside and set up a discovery table. Today I’m sharing five tools for your fall discovery table. These items will help your little scientists make observations and use real science tools in the process.

Questions to ask:

• What do you notice about the different leaves? (colors, shape, size) 
  
• What time of year do trees like sycamore and maple lose all of their leaves? (fall/autumn) 
  
• Pine cones and pine needles come from evergreen trees. They lose their needles a little at a time; not all at once. Compare the green pine needles to the brown ones. What do you think the difference is? (time – the green needles fell more recently than the brown needles, the brown needles are older/drier) 

Observations to make: 

• What do you notice about the different kinds of bark? (color, texture, etc.) 
  
• Look at the inside of the walnut. Compare it to the outside. 
  
• How is the small pine cone similar to the large pine cone? (look at the cone scales, or seed scales) 

Measuring is a science and math skill that is important to practice. Once you’ve taught your child how to use a ruler or tape measure properly, set them off to compare the sizes of different nature items. We used the tape measure and ruler. My kids love finding the objects on the card and then measuring them. Taking the tape measure outside on your next nature walk would also be fun. Measure the distance between trees or the length of a large rock. The possibilities are endless. 

Questions to ask: 

• How many leaves will it take to balance a walnut? 
  
• Which is heavier: a pine cone or an acorn? 
  
• Which weighs less: a hickory nut or three orange leaves? 

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.