My kids (3 years old) have never tried Montessori pin poking, which involves tracing a design onto paper and then cutting it out by making small pin holes close together along the outline of the image. It's great practice for using the pincer-grip and a good exercise in concentration and precision. I wasn't sure my kids were ready for it yet, so I thought we'd start out with a variation by poking pin holes into tin foil to make pretty patterns. Here's how we did it...
We're still working on tracing, but with the tin foil, the kids could just pick out cookie cutters and press them down to create the outline of their desired shape. I put a piece of craft felt under each sheet of aluminum foil to help with the pin poking.
Then I gave each child a pushpin and let them poke along the outline. Instead of having the holes right next to each other so the shape gets punched out, I showed them how to create evenly-spaced marks on the line.
Once the kids were done, we held our design up to the light to see our beautiful creations..
For longer-lasting decorations, you could stick the tin foil to some clear contact paper and hang it up on the window, but my kids didn't mind when we crumpled up their creations. L and E concentrated on this activity all morning. They enjoyed picking their own cookie cutter shapes and L even made a set of dinosaurs as a present for her sister.
Check out all the wonderful linky parties I participate in on the sideback (right hand side).
Great idea! We may try this.
ReplyDeleteMy son did this with numbers. He felt so proud I trusted him with a pushpin!
ReplyDeletePin punching on aluminum foil is a great idea! Thanks for linking up with Montessori Monday. I pinned your post to my Kids' Christmas Activities board at http://pinterest.com/debchitwood/kids-christmas-activities/
ReplyDeleteThanks for linking up to the Kids Co-op last week. I featured your adorable foil punching activity. I can't wait to see what you link up this week.
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