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This month in the toddler room we’ve been focusing a lot on developing their fine motor skills, which will help them with dressing and eating independently. One activity we did to help them with this was a loose part threading activity.
Various plastic and paper loose parts were set out on a tray, along with pipe cleaners. That tray was then placed on the light table to help it appear more inviting to the toddlers. Several children in the room came over to investigate the materials. A few of them immediately started threading the plastic loose parts and pieces of paper on the pipe cleaner, as if the loose parts were beads. Other children grabbed handfuls of the loose parts and dropped them on the light table. They were probably doing this to explore cause and effect. When an educator came over and sat down with the toddlers, one of the them grabbed materials for the teacher to use. When the children were done with the activity some of them put their materials away and others left them in a pile on the table.
As we go through what the children did we can see that not only did this activity help them develop their fine motor skills, they also showed evidence of using social emotional skills, such as empathizing with the teacher and handing over materials for them to use, and using their cognitive skills like attention regulation as they spent time trying again and again to thread the loose parts. Over all this was a great activity to focus on multiple skills at once.
