Motor Skills Monday with some Beads and Pool Stunts!

Because 90% of the things I do with my kids I find on Pinterest, why not share another great fine motor activity?! And this one also encourages counting skills. Super easy (& inexpensive) to make too!

Counting with Beads and Pipe cleaners

I came across this on Mess for Less blog, via Pinterest.

Materials
5-6 pipe cleaners
beads
2 pieces of paper (I used card stock)
markers
tape

I actually had a great pic of the materials but my little wanna-be photographer (ahem...Myla) accidentally deleted it.

Anyway, you take the 2 pieces of paper and tape them together for a wider page.
Cut the pipe cleaners in half (or a little more than half) and tape only the top ends to the paper.
Leave the bottom ends free so the littles can place the beads on that way.

Then write the numbers 1-10 across the top ends of the pipe cleaners.

I love that this activity required very little instruction from me. She saw the numbers, beads and pipe cleaners and said, "Oh! We are going to make mini caterpillars!"

Sure, honey, sounds good. 

I just told her to match the number with the beads and she was all set. 

 I placed the beads in a small bowl because I wanted her to count out what she needed for each one. 

Turned out that she just grabbed some and counted them in her hand to see if she was right. A couple times she was!

About halfway through she complained that she was poking herself with the pipe cleaner. It was all because of how she was placing the beads on. She was pushing her finger into it to get the bead on instead of holding the bead on the sides and threading through. Does that make sense?

It was a great chance for me to say, "Ok, figure out a way where you won't do that anymore." By pipe cleaner #8, she had figured it out. :)

She did it and she's so proud! 

She also thought it was neat that the beads didn't fall off when she lifted the paper up. 

"So, mom, can we make mini caterpillars now?" 

(Great idea for the leftovers, btw!)

I liked that this encouraged lots of counting as she had to count the beads from the bowl first, count as she placed them on and we went back and double-checked her beads to be sure she had them correct. 

Extension ideas???

*Take the beads off one by one and count backwards(we may do this tomorrow as I just thought of it)

*See how many beads the pipe cleaners can hold

*Make color patterns with the beads

* Make mini caterpillars with your leftovers! ha ha

*I'm sure there are more...let me know if you try it!

Maybe it's the teacher in me, but I really like for the things we make to last longer than a day, so I plan to keep this around for M to do again and again. 

That was the extent of our motor skills activities for the day and that happened before 10am. 

We spent some time at the library...

Playing on the computer after checking out our books...

 Once we left the library and were headed to the car, N stopped and said, "Mommy, TOP! (stop), let's take a picture!!" Poor kids are so used to posing for the camera. 

AND we spent some time in Nana's pool. 

Someone was super excited...

Don't feel bad for N here, he is a mad man and absolutely loves these stunts with Daddy.

Myla and I worked on somersaults in the water. Guess we did work on some motor skills after all. :)

The kids really love hanging on daddy. 

I mean, he is the biggest kid out of them all. 

What?! You didn't know that I had 3 kids??

Well, I do. And I love them dearly. :)