Hiya, It's Robin from
Sweet Tea Classroom. If you know me, I'm big on fine motor skills for the little ones. I created this dinosaur themed activity for all who love to teach about dinosaurs. My main goal was to create an activity that promotes fine motor skills in a fun way.
Plus, special education students and students with autism often need help developing fine motor skills and I think that this activity is a good fit too.
This is a super way to teach color recognition as well as get students to work with letter and word recognition. Why just teach one topic when you can teach more at the same time, right? Integrate fun!
Here's how it works. Let your little ones paint a set of clothespins. Paint one clothespin for each letter in the words for the colors that you'll use. So you will paint three red for R-E-D. We used tempera paint cakes. This is one of my school art supplies must-have items. Forget the jars or even the... gasp..powder. Use tempera cakes. I found these at Lakeshore--yep...I'm close to a store too. Lucky {and poor} me!
Then add the letters to the clothespins with Sharpie markers or any type of permanent marker. You'll need to do this step or for my homeschool mamas, this is a super way to let older siblings help.
Now, what the kiddos will do is match or clip the clothespins to the stegosaurus that is the same color. Older kiddos will match the letters too. Notice how I left the letters off of the orange and yellow clips. This is for students who will have difficulty matching the letters too.
One student can work on this dinosaur folder center or you can make a dinosaur train for a small group activity. Place the dinosaurs in a circle and put the clothespins in the center.
This is a perfect way for little fingers to work with fine motor skills as they clip each clothespin to the dinosaur's back. Plus, they'll have fun learning. You can find out more about this activity at my teaching resource store
{here}
Be sure to swing by my blog too! You can find me at Sweet Tea Classroom at www.sweetteaclassroom.com
Thanks, Robin Sellers
How do you organize your centers? I do a combination of Daily 5 and the requirements of my school district. Here are some cards that help me communicate with the children. I mount these on tagboard and put magnets on the back, and I can organize our Literacy time anyway I want. Come on over to Elementary Matters to see ideas!
