Somewhere along the way, I figured out that Nick and Sally needed to learn skills like sorting and tonging. Many activities that involve life skills as well as dexterity are good for the kids. Since Nick isn’t going to preschool until September, I’ve been trying to spend more time on various activities and projects to help him learn skills.
My husband, Stephen is very much into electronics. He writes a blog at www.skywired.net. Since circuits and radios have been a hobby of his for many years, we have quite the collection of pieces and parts in our basement. Lately, he’s been working on sorting, purging, and inventorying them.
Stephen came up from the basement yesterday and asked me if Nick could sort this box of capacitors for him. I knew this was a perfect exercise. I was also glad that I could tell Nick that he had a job to do for daddy. We used a muffin tin for sorting. It worked like a charm.
I don’t know much about capacitors, but they sure come in many shapes and sizes. Soon almost every spot in the tin had at least one type.
Meanwhile, we also had a bag of misc. capacitors that were destined for the trash. I decided that these would make a good tweezing activity for Sally and Nick. Sally didn’t quite grasp the concept of the tweezers at first, but she ended up understanding it by the end. It will take her some practice to actually use them.
Nick was anxious to try the tweezers. After a few minutes of sorting capacitors, he was having a blast picking up the little pieces parts with the tweezers.
I think I’m going to start a running list of activities that I can do with the kids to help them practice skills. It’s hard to think of them on the spot when they are needed. This tweezers activity is definitely a keeper.