This month in the Infant room, we’ve been creating a variety of fun, interactive activities that highlight winter experiences and seasonal celebrations. Educator Kayla had an idea to make a fine motor activity with two seasonal winter characters, Santa Claus and Mr. Snowman. It started with Kayla painting a Santa Claus face on a large piece of cardboard, as well as using a previously painted Snowman that was also on a large piece of cardboard. Both of which fit perfectly over the sensory bin in the room. Kayla then painted snowflakes and chocolate chip cookies on smaller cardboard circles for the infants to feed each character.
The day of the activity Kayla set up the sensory bin with the cut out of the characters with the cookies and snowflakes for the infants to explore. The infants were intrigued as to what was on the sensory bin. As most of our infants are learning to pull themselves up and standing on their own, they were excited to come check it out! The infants were able to figure out the purpose of the activity and were continuously engaged in the activity. They had so much fun putting the snowflakes and cookies into Santa and Mr. Snowman’s mouths and then taking them all out of the bin to start again. The infants worked on their fine motor skills by using their pincer grasp to hold onto the cut-outs and place them in the openings. They also used gross motor skills by standing on their own and finding their balance.
As the infants enjoyed this activity so much, the educators already have another seasonal character in the works to continue the fun! Stay tuned to see who it is!
