The Preschooler: Day 2...Folder Games, Clothes Pins, and Paints

Today I decided to pull out some folder games.  The girls and I made these games from File Folder Fun   this summer. They have been wonderful. Our guy tends to do better with them when I place the game on a mat of some kind, so that he knows what area of the table is for him. ( In the photo his "mat" is a folded up table cloth that I grabbed from a near by laundry basket!) I am sitting right beside him at the table to offer assistance, but can also be helping his siblings.   He is not a "sitting still" kind of guy, so we have worked up to doing several games in one sitting. 

 We also made several games that use clothes pins.  Because he was a preemie, Thunderbolt was a little delayed in developing his pincer grasp. Clothes pins are a great tool for developing fine motor skills. You can place them around buckets or boxes if you don't have games like this. These games match the letter on the clothes pin to a corresponding upper case (or lower case) letter, or match a letter to a beginning sound on a picture. I cannot recall where I printed them from, but it would be easy to make your own. I laminated both the folder games and the clothes pin games with clear Contact paper.

After some free play time ( he ended up playing with his cars on the bean bag game,which is also a stellar ramp!), I set up the water colors for him.

Several years ago I found this easel at a thrift store for five dollars.  I was thrilled! I frequently bring it into the kitchen and he can paint away while I am cooking or working with someone else at the table. I haven't found anything that can be harmed by water colors!  Yes, they do all eventually all end up being a brownish color...but they are only $1.97 each, and all my children have eventually learned to rinse the brush after each color! We were given a stack of scrap paper from an office, and it is great for preschool painting.

Hope you have had a fun day!