Fine Motor Jars
Fine Motor Jars are great for development in all areas!
Articulation/Speech: The buttons, shapes, and pegs are great tokens to give a child as reinforcement within articulation activities. Have the child imitate various words and sounds and earn tokens until all have filled in the jar.
Language: Your child can learn colors, shapes, and counting with these manipulatives. Place them in various parts of your home to work on positional concepts (under the table, on the chair), and forming 2-4 word sentences by having your child make verbal requests for them.
Pragmatics: Turn-taking skills and joint attention.
Fine Motor/Visual Motor: When children handle the manipulatives contained in these cups, they are working on fine motor grasp development as well as in-hand manipulation as they turn and rotate the objects. Hand-eye coordination is needed to aim for the appropriate slots in the lid. These skills promote foundational skills needed to later control writing tools and complete self-care skills like buttoning. Crossing midline can be incorporated by positioning the jar on the opposite side of the grasping hand, and bilateral coordination is addressed as children string pieces together or stabilize the jar with their other hand while sliding the pieces in.
Sensory: A fun way to use these jars is with a tactile discrimination task. Have children reach into a jar of mixed shapes and identify the shape they pick with just touch before pulling it out! You can make this easier by filling the jar with only 2 different types of shapes. Another sensory idea is to hide the objects in a bin of rice/beans, shaving cream, or water beads.
Gross Motor: Gross motor skills such as balancing on one foot, hopping, skipping or jumping can be utilized with the jars. You can use them for obstacle courses, picking the small objects up with your toes in standing or sitting, placing them in the bucket using your toes, or doing sit ups with one object in your hand and placing in the buckets.