This month in the School-age 1 after school program, a lot of the children had been showing a big interest in activities that involve using their fine motor skills. To help develop and follow their interest, we had gone through a lot of ideas we could do for Father’s Day with it being in the month of June. We had all come up with the idea of making our very own figurine out of some nuts and bolts. That’s exactly what we did, we got all of the materials to make them and got right to work labeling everything that we were using. Educator Nicole had sat down with the children and started discussing what they saw. Harrison had shouted out “look this one is a wing nut because it looks like it has wings.” Sophia was holding up the nuts that she was given and said “These are hex nuts, and I know that because my dad has a lot of these at home.” Aubree then shouted out, “These flat ones are the washers because they go in between the bolt and nut.” Educator Nicole had then asked the group if they knew what the very last one was called and Aurora shouted out, “Yup that’s the bolt because it looks like lightning!” Once we were done naming all of the items we were using, we got right to work. First, we added on a washer, then a hex nut, followed by a wing nut. After the wing nut we added two more hex nuts and then to finish it off, we added the last wing nut just upside down.
During this activity, our friends had lots of conversations. For example, Sophia and Aubree were talking about how fun it was to spin everything on. Aurora and Harrison were having a conversation about how it looks like a dad saying hooray when it was all put together. These conversations helped the children with their communication skills. This activity also fosters the children’s social skills as we did this activity in small groups and we even developed some more friendships by doing this since everyone came to the table at different times. We also fostered our cognitive skills during this activity as we were learning about new materials, but some friends were using their memory as they have seen these parts before. The last skill we fostered was our fine motor skills as it took a lot of time and patience to screw on each item to the bolt. But once it was all finished, everyone showed a sense of pride in their work which showed that they have great emotional skills as well.
After we were finished with this activity, we started to wonder what else we could do with these materials. “We can make a picture frame” Sophia had said. “We can make our own dolls with bigger ones,” Aubree shouted. “We can make a car maybe” Harrison said with his finger on his chin. So many ideas to choose from, what could we do?
