Where is thumpkin?

One of my favorite tunes as a child was "Where is Thumpkin?"  I can remember my "thumpkin" act always being a popular request at family get togethers. Little did I know how much effort goes into working those little baby girl fingers!

Audrey has required some physical therapy on the muscles in her hands and she is doing great! However, we know how important it is for her to develop those fine motor skills. This was my jumping off point for my first 2 activity bags.

I have been doing the regular mommy bit when getting ready for a project:

• seeking
• reading
• gathering
• cutting
• reading (again)
• assembly

The 1st activity we are doing is pushing beans into little X's on the lid of a butter dish.

Setup:

 

1.  Use a knife to carefully cut 4 small X's in the lid of a small dish (butter dish).
2.  Draw a circle around each X so they are easily located.
3.  Press the flaps on each circle back so they aren't so hard to push the beans through.
4. Use a baggy or a smaller container to hold a large handful of dry beans.
5. Demonstrate putting a bean on the circle/X and pushing it into the container USING YOUR POINTER FINGER.

**Using the pointer finger is the hard part...it is much easier to push the bean into the hole using the thumb because it is stronger. But the point here is to strengthen the other fingers. So we took turns and clapped and sang "Yeah!" and gave kisses...it was quite the party!!

As you can see she really wants to push the bean in with her thumb...but I just play along, modeling the correct way.

Remember, this is supposed to be fun AND this is our special time together. I have been at work with everyone else's sweet babies all day...it's MY baby's turn =)



The 2nd activity is simply a piggy bank and some change.
 Setup:  1. gather coins
            2. get piggy bank that you can easily retrieve the coins from to play again.

The best thing about both of these activities is that you can use stuff you have around the house. Storage is super easy as well. For the beans I put the small container with the beans inside the larger one & for the piggy bank I put the money in the pig (imagine that).

I set both activities in a small basket on top of the counter (I will need to find a better storage space as I put together additional activities).

My plan is to rotate 1 activity out and replace it with a new activity each week. This way each activity will be played with for 2 weeks and 1 new one to tackle at a time.

The #1 goal is for me to have some 1 on 1 time with Audrey everyday when I get home. About 20 - 30 minutes on our activity (see how much time she wants), have a story (or 2 or 3 or 4 - can't help it...it's the librarian in me!), and spend some time talking about her day or counting her bobo's or whatever she wants to do!

Today she just kept walking around the yard, waving her hand at me, and saying "follow me, follow me" so that is exactly what I did...and I loved every minute of it!