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Skills to Pratice this Month
- Encourage exploration, manipulation and dramatic play.
- Provide toys, games and household objects that encourage your child to explore, ask questions, and use her imagination. Allow your child to manipulate small objects to improve her fine-motor skills. Work with your child using these materials. Have your child practice putting away toys and other items when asked.
- Provide opportunities to play with other children.
- Allow your child to interact and play with other children in a variety of settings: the park, playground, library, etc. Talk to your child about taking turns, sharing, and cooperating with others.
Activities
To encourage your child’s sense of exploration, have a scavenger hunt indoors or outdoors. Draw pictures of things for your child to find or cut images from magazines and glue them on a piece of paper, and write the name of the item beside the picture. Or give your child a clue to the first item. Have the clue for the second item at the first one and so on.
In order to improve fine-motor skills, give your child a shoelace, a ribbon, or a piece of yarn and items to string onto it such as large beads, hollow pasta noodles, or buttons. Encourage him to make simple patterns, such as alternating two red beads with one piece of pasta. Make creations into necklaces to be proudly worn by you and your child.
Allow your child to practice sorting small items by placing various items of differing sizes, shapes, colors, and textures into a box or bowl. Ask your child to find and pick out all the items of a certain color, a certain size or texture. Allow her to come up with her own criteria for sorting as well. You might be surprised.
Play board games and other games with your child. These types of games require children to wait for their turn and encourage patience and cooperation.
Create a dramatic play area in your home with clothing items and other household items that allow children to use their imagination to pretend to be all kinds of things. With bowls and utensils from the kitchen and a large white shirt and a hat, your child could pretend to be a chef. With stuffed animals, a veterinarian.
Talk to your child about how to introduce herself to others when first meeting some one new and making new friends. Let your child practice this new skill the next time she is playing with children she doesn’t know. “Hi. My name is Danielle. I’m 4. Can I join your game?”
Useful Websites
- Family Fun Magazine
This site provides families with creative ideas and real-life solutions as well as many arts and crafts projects and games.
- The Activity Idea Place
This early childhood resource has many wonderful ideas, songs, games, and more for exploring and encouraging friendship and cooperation.
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