Over the past two weeks in the Burrow, the children have been using their gross and fine motor skills within their play. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the term gross and fine motor skills, here’s what it means:
Gross motor skills: Involvement in movement and coordination of the arms, legs and other large body parts and movements.
Fine motor skills: Small movement such as picking up small objects, that use small muscles in the body, such as fingers, toes, wrists, lips and tongue.
The children have been using their gross motor skills by doing some very exciting ‘cotton wool painting and throwing’. The adults in the Burrow pinned a large piece of paper to the wall and table, and the provided the paint and cotton wool. The children then had a go at dipping their cotton wool in the paint and then throwing it at the paper! It was all very exciting! The Burrow children at first were a little wary that we had just told them they could throw something in the Burrow, which is normally what we do outside… but they all soon got stuck in and had great fun seeing who could throw the highest and who could get more paint on their piece of cotton wool before it was thrown! The gross motor skills being used were the big movements of their arms when they were throwing the cotton wool, some children arms would reach right back to throw, and other children did more of an ‘underarm’ throw, but either way they were using their gross motor skills!
Another activity that we’ve been doing in the Burrow is using some scissors (scary I know), I’d like to add that the children are being supervised at all times while using the scissors, the scissors are using our fine motor skills. At first the children were introduced to using the scissors to cut a small ‘snip’ in a piece of thin card (stiffer than paper) , they were shown by an adult how to use the scissors and how to then cut small ‘snip’ into the card. The children learn to do this before attempting the repetitive movements required for cutting. The look on the children’s faces when they realised they had cut a line in a piece of paper was very rewarding! We then furthered this activity by making little ‘people’ out of some paper, the adults rolled the paper and added some eyes, nose and mouth, while the children were given the scissors to cut the ‘hair’ of the ‘people’. Making the cutting into a ‘person’ was that little bit more fun for the Burrowers. The fine motor skills that were being used were the small movements of the children hands and wrists when using the scissors!
Thank you, Ezme.