Summer Holidays - books & games for the brain

BoardsMember

Hi. I have a 6 and a half year old just finishing up senior infants. All in all he's ok in school, he struggles a bit with writing numbers & letters backwards, but he's doing pretty well we feel.

He struggles with concentration and organisation. He ended up spending time with the remedial teacher purely to get out of the distracting class (30+ kids) and get some one on one. At first I was concerned, but teacher assured us he has buckets of ability, but that he'd usually be the first to be distracted.

I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for fun activities & fun books that we could work with during the summer. Something that maybe can give him a bit of a head start going into first class. He sometimes lacks a little confidence so I think its important he's holding his own in class. Any suggestions welcome for things to help with concentration & organisation, but also things to help with reading, writing and maths.

Thanks!

silverharp

we found once we got the kids reading by themselves everything else slotted into place. There are lots of good kid's series books out there, Astrosaurs and Horrid Henry come to mind, we worked up to them using some of the phonic books and then "cat in the hat" type book

On the maths side I started using Khanacademy.org at around 6 and a half and it improved their maths no end.

byhookorbycrook

Horrid Henry might be a bit of a step up, you could read them to him though. Oxford reading tree books are widely available in public libraries so maybe check with the learning support teacher as to what level would suit. Start him at an easier level to build confidence. What phonic system do they use in school-is it Jolly Phonics?

Poor writing can often stem from underdeveloped motor skills,lots of ideas below.

Fine Motor Skills
Things to remember:
Upright working surfaces promote fine motor skills. Examples of these are: vertical
chalkboards; easels for painting; flannel boards; lite bright; magnet boards (or
fridge); windows and mirrors; white boards, etc. Children can also make sticker
pictures; do rubber ink-stamping; use reuseable stickers to make pictures; complete
puzzles with thick knobs; use magna-doodle and etch-a-sketch as well. The benefits
for these include: having the child's wrist positioned to develop good thumb
movements; they help develop good fine motor muscles; the child is using the arm
and shoulder muscles.
Fine Motor Activities
Moulding and rolling play dough into balls - using the palms of the
hands facing each other and with fingers curled slightly towards the palm.
Rolling play dough into tiny balls (peas) using only the finger tips.
Using pegs or toothpicks to make designs in play dough.
Cutting play dough with a plastic knife or with a pizza wheel by holding
the implement in a diagonal volar grasp.
Tearing newspaper into strips and then crumpling them into balls. Use
to stuff scarecrow or other art creation.
Scrunching up 1 sheet of newspaper in one hand. This is a super
strength builder.
Using a plant sprayer to spray plants, (indoors, outdoors) to spray snow
(mix food colouring with water so that the snow can be painted), or melt
"monsters". (Draw monster pictures with markers and the colours will run
when sprayed.)
Primary
Picking up objects using large tweezers such as those found in the
"Bedbugs" game. This can be adapted by picking up Cheerios, small cubes,
small marshmallows, pennies, etc., in counting games.
Shaking dice by cupping the hands together, forming an empty air space
between the palms.
Using small-sized screwdrivers like those found in an erector set.
Lacing and sewing activities such as stringing beads, Cheerios,
macaroni, etc.
Using eye droppers to "pick up" coloured water for colour mixing or
to make artistic designs on paper.
Rolling small balls out of tissue paper, then gluing the balls onto
construction paper to form pictures or designs.
Turning over cards, coins, checkers, or buttons, without bringing them to
the edge of the table.
Making pictures using stickers or self-sticking paper reinforcements.
Playing games with the "puppet fingers" -the thumb, index, and middle
fingers. At circle time have each child's puppet fingers tell about what
happened over the weekend, or use them in songs and finger plays.
Place a variety of forms (eg. blocks, felt, paper, string, yarn, cereal,
cotton) on outlines
Match shapes, colour, or pictures to a page and paste them within the
outlines
Primary
Self-Care Skills
Buttoning
Lacing
Tying
Fastening Snaps
Zipping
Carrying
Using a screwdriver
Locking and unlocking a door
Winding a clock
Opening and closing jars
Rolling out dough or other simple cooking activities
Washing plastic dishes
Primary
Sweeping the floor
Dressing
Scissor Activities
When scissors are held correctly, and when they fit a child's hand well, cutting
activities will exercise the very same muscles which are needed to manipulate a pencil
in a mature tripod grasp. The correct scissor position is with the thumb and middle
finger in the handles of the scissors, the index finger on the outside of the handle to
stabilize, with fingers four and five curled into the palm.
Cutting junk mail, particularly the kind of paper used in magazine
subscription cards.
Making fringe on the edge of a piece of construction paper.
Cutting play dough or clay with scissors.
Cutting straws or shredded paper.
Cutting
Use a thick black line to guide cutting the following:
A fringe from a piece of paper
Cut off corners of a piece of paper
Cut along curved lines
Cut lines with a variety of angles
Primary
Cut figures with curves and angles
Sensory Activities
The following activities ought to be done frequently to increase postural muscle
strength and endurance. These activities also strengthen the child's awareness of
his/her hands.
Wheelbarrow walking, crab walking
Clapping games (loud/quiet, on knees together, etc.)
Catching (clapping) bubbles between hands
Pulling off pieces of thera-putty with individual fingers and thumb
Drawing in a tactile medium such as wet sand, salt, rice, or "goop".
Make "goop" by adding water to cornstarch until you have a mixture similar
in consistency to toothpaste. The "drag" of this mixture provides feedback to
the muscle and joint receptors, thus facilitating visual motor control.
Picking out small objects like pegs, beads, coins, etc., from a tray of salt,
sand, rice, or putty. Try it with eyes closed too. This helps develop sensory
awareness in the hands.
Midline Crossing
Establishment of hand dominance is still developing at this point. The following
activities will facilitate midline crossing:
Encourage reaching across the body for materials with each hand. It
may be necessary to engage the other hand in an activity to prevent
switching hands at midline.
Primary
Refrain specifically from discouraging a child from using the left hand
for any activity. Allow for the natural development of hand dominance by
presenting activities at midline, and allowing the child to choose freely.
Start making the child aware of the left and right sides of his body
through spontaneous comments like, "kick the ball with your right leg." Play
imitation posture games like "Simon Says" with across the body movements.
When painting at easel, encourage the child to paint a continuous line
across the entire paper- also from diagonal to diagonal.


1. Pegs –
You need pegs of different sizes, clothes pegs, small bulldog clips, stationery clips etc. Get the children to use one hand only at a time. I usually get them to peg about 10 pegs of different sizes onto the sides of a gift bag. They might put them on with their left hand and take them off with their right.
They can also try squeezing the pegs between the first finger and thumb (on each hand) then the middle finger and thumb and so on.

2. Elastic bands –
Elastic gymnastics! – Start by putting 2 elastic bands (the same size) around the thumb, first and middle fingers, ask the child to open and close the fingers. Then add another 2 elastic bands and so on. The more you have on, the harder it is to move your fingers. These exercises help to develop the muscles which make the web space when writing.

3. Beads –
Get beads of different sizes and thread. Ask the children to thread some beads onto their string. The smaller the hole obviously the harder it is to thread. Develops hand/eye coordination.

4. Ball bearings and tweezers –
Put the ball bearings in one little box and ask the child to try and pick one ball bearing up at a time with the tweezers and place in a second small box. If this is too tricky try using Hama beads and tweezers.

5. Playdough/marla –
These products are great for squeezing and rolling which provides necessary sensory feedback and helps to develop hand strength. Ask the children to squeeze the dough and roll it with the palm of their hand.

6. Doodle board –
The Doodleboard is just a way of children practising handwriting patterns or letters without having to commit them to paper. Provide some patterns and shapes to copy.

7. Gummed Shapes –
Give the children a sheet of plain paper and ask them to make patterns or pictures with the gummed shapes. Just picking up on shape at a time, licking it and then sticking it down all help to develop hand/eye coordination and the pincer grip.

8. Hama Beads –
Hama beads are good for pincer grip and hand/eye coordination. The children have patterned sheets to copy and peg boards to put them on.

9. Lacing cards –
Also good for hand/eye coordination. Just give each child one card to lace.

10. Bean bags –
Give a child 4-5 bean bags and place a container about 3 feet infront of them. Ask the child to try and get as many beanbags in the container as possible. (Hand/eye coordination)

11. Chalk and blackboard –
If you can, try and wedge the blackboard between two tables and provide the child with a piece of chalk in each hand. Ask them to draw the same pattern with both hands at the same time on both sides of the board. This helps develop bilateral movement.
Allow the children to draw patterns, shapes and letter shapes on the blackboard. The chalk gives sensory feedback and sound simultaneously.

12. Stencils –
Children can use the stencils to make a picture. Helps develop pencil control and special awareness among other things.

13. Feathers –
Ask the children to try and balance a feather on different parts of their body. This helps to develop balance and coordination.

14. Handhugger pens –
Hand hugger pens are the triangular shaped pens. These help the children to establish a better pencil grip.

15. Tissue paper strips –
Place the child’s palm (at the wrist) on the end of a strip of tissue paper. Ask them to only use their middle finger to get the paper to scrunch up under their hand.
Repeat, but this time place the side of the child’s hand on one end of the tissue strip and ask them to only use their thumb to scrunch up the paper and bring it under their hand.
These activities really help to develop the hand arch, web space and muscle tone of the hand.

16. Stickers –
Children love stickers. Just peeling them off provides an opportunity to develop fine motor skills and hand/eye coordination.

17. Peg boards –
These can be peg boards where the child has to place pegs in the holes, maybe copying patterns.
They can be the boards with plastic pegs already on where they have to stretch elastic bands between them to make patterns.
Squeeze a soft sponge ball in the palm of your hand, or sponges while in the bath. (hold for 30 seconds increasing to 1 min)

Wringing out wet cloths using 2 hands.

Pinch and seal zip locks bag and close it.

Turning pennies from heads to tails.

Practising isolated finger movements when playing with play dough by pinching it with the thumb and index and middle finger. Also poking the play dough with individual fingers.

Using a spray gun get to play games, spray at a target or help with the cleaning!

Put an elastic band around the fingers and thumb. Open and close fingers to stretch the band. (double the band to increase resistance)

Opening and closing clothes pegs.

Practise touching the pads of each finger to the thumb of the same hand.

Using the thumb, index and middle fingers only, spin a coin sideways and towards the palm. Or spin a small spinning top with these fingers.

Playing with therapeutic putty or play dough - squeezing, prodding &, rolling.

Put an elastic band around a pair of scissors, this will keep the tension constantly tight and encourage working the hand muscles.

Using a toy tool kit with screwdriver or a hammer.

Scrunching paper to make a collage or flick into a goal (finger soccer!)

Tearing paper - increase the thickness of paper up to cardboard

Pencil tug of war with another person. Hold pencil with thumb, index and middle fingers

RubyGirl

Great info above, but I'd put that at montessori level not for a 6 year old imho. My guy loves word search at the moment so I picked up a great book in the euro shop and he's big into spelling things now and reading.
We play the spelling game in the car along with eye spy and he and my 4 year old loves it.
And once a week we go to the library and pick out three books, 2 I pick out and he has his choice of his then. Prob be going a little more often now school's out. He's great at writing out the shopping list now aswell, you call out what you need and he will look for the old packaging and pick out the right word to put on the list.

Mr.Wemmick

A visual Summer diary

Get him to keep a diary and draw a picture of any days out: a trip to the Zoo, a meal in a restaurant, a playdate etc. You could also get him to make collages: cutting out pictures from paper, magazines to paste down good for those fine motor skills, as byhookorbycrook has included in her post. Get him to title the pictures and use words or short sentences to describe the day out or a meal he has eaten, a play date with a friend - sentences or bubble words to describe what he did and how he felt. It's also very important too to encourage speaking in sentences when he is planing to write. Speech and language are very important to develop in young children: correct use of verbs, adjectives, connectives, prepositions..


A take-with-you-anywhere maths note book.

If he likes cars get him to keep count of how many makes of cars he sees in a day whilst out & about. He can make a table of the most popular cars in his town or on his road - colour, make, size, estate, saloon etc. You can make this task more difficult or easy depending on what he is able to do and/or his interest.
He can do the same with animals if you live rurally or how many houses on your road: their shapes, size, windows, colour etc. - getting kids to think naturally with numbers is half the battle.
Give him coins to pretend buy things/objects with, a few single euro coins (or different 5c/10c/20c/50c/5 euro coin pieces if he is older). e.g. a camping trip and he needs to buy some things but he has only 5 single euro coins and there are 7 camping objects at 1 euro each, have to decide on what is more important.
A measuring tape to measure things in your home, and it doesn't matter if he makes mistakes, it's the concept and understanding that is important - bigger, smaller, longer, shorter, wider, deeper etc. Get him to keep a record of all the objects he measures.
Cooking/baking measurements, following recipes etc also good for maths. Heat degrees of the oven/ the cooker top/ heat numbers - what number heat do you need to simmer, gentle cooking, bring to the boil etc.
Computer work using street view and google earth: get him to plan a route from your house to the supermarket/doctors/playground/his friends etc writing down the directions - left, right, road name etc. (my 7 year old loves doing this)

@byhookorbycrook - that is a great post, very helpful, thank you. The post should be sticky.
It is very difficult as a parent to find the right resources and ideas. Your post is one great list of activities, and an essential list for young children's development. I have a 4 year old who struggles with a scissors while my other child could use a scissors by 3. I agree that motor skills on the whole are often undeveloped in kids and can be a problem for many years of primary school, so all your activities are well worth doing/repeating with older kids too.

RubyGirl

Mr. Wemmick good post, I'll def steal your visual diary idea. I'm going to pick up a scrap book for his summer 2012 memories. He's big into drawing so he can draw in it, do collages, take pictures on his ds and we can upload them onto the laptop and print them off for him. Of course my 4 year old will want to do the same so it will be good for both of them.

He's constantly talking about and showing me pictures of "what he want's for his birthday (Nov) and christmas" so he can cut out the pictures and stick them in aswell.

MrTsSnickers

I picked up scrabble for an adult games night a couple of years ago. Between the age of 6-now (nearly 8) the young fella saw us playing it and wanted to join in and he loved it. We help him with making words and cheat a little bit with giving him easy letters and some of his books so he could find words himself, now he's to the point where he needs only a little help.

My guy really loves maths (and op I wouldn't worry too much about the writing..my guy had AWFUL hand writing leaving senior infants, it's improved so much in first class - still a ways to go but he tries so that's okay with me) so I picked up some cheap sums books and gave him a number line.

LEGO LEGO LEGO LEGO, as with many boys (and girls i suppose although I don't have a girl so don't know) that age get distracted easily but will sit happily with a box of lego for ages.

My guy likes the flat stanley/horrid henry/horrible histories books but he only really got into reading mid way through 1st class. Maybe some books about animals that he can look at the pictures and maybe pick out a few words himself might be good.

I forgot about cars/soldiers and little bits and pieces that they can put in a group/not in a group/by colour/ by type. My guy loves them.

iguana

RubyGirl wrote: »

Great info above, but I'd put that at montessori level not for a 6 year old imho.

Montessori is an education system that goes from 3 to 17/18 years old not an alternative word for pre-school.