A long range goal and practical life/art combo activities

Long range goal activity

LANGUAGE ARTS/GEOGRAPHY/CULTURAL STUDIES

At first E traced around a continent puzzle shape for, in this case, South America on a construction paper that matches the color of the puzzle piece. And then he took the paper to the rug and closely punched the drawn continent shape with a jumbo corn skewer (which I find would be easier for E to use).
This is the punched continent shape. Since he is quite impatient (he would finish his punching work in just a couple of mins if not less), I improvised this activity a little by making this a perforating exercise instead of a punching out exercise. For a complete punching out of the shape, it might be better to remove one pin from the skewer so that it's easier to work with for that purpose.

I helped E to then tear along the perforated line and he then glued this onto a cardstock. The long range plan is to then collect information for this continent and use this as the front cover for a booklet on this continent. This activity encourages perseverance and introduces concept of a unit study besides others. This is the same experience I had sought for in the Eric Carle-inspired collage for E where isolated art activities were then consolidated after several days/weeks to complete a new project.

PRACTICAL LIFE
Folding cleaning rag.

PRACTICAL LIFE/ART

Using tongs to pick up marble and place in paint and then dropping it on paper.

Manipulate tray to allow marble to roll randomly thus creating random color marks on paper.

Final result!

This activity encouraged E to pick and drop the marble numerous times with the use of tongs which gave his pincer muscles a great workout - great for handwriting goal. It was fun and he didn't mind doing it over and over again. It also gave him control exercises as he had to try and make sure the marbles did not fall out of the baking sheet. Using a baking sheet with more depth would make it easier on a child.