September 2008- Crafts of the Month-Hands Up!
Many school programs utilize the All about Me theme during the first weeks of school. We have some great ideas where the child gets to explore the functions of the HAND! Try one or more of the ideas below and your children will give you a HAND!
Animal Hand Prints
Materials Needed:
Paper or Construction paper
Tempra Paint and brush
Markers, glue and glitter or glitter pens
Directions:
Have child paint one hand using the tempra paint.
Spreading the painted fingers out (these will be the legs or "spikes" of the animal), place the painted hand down on the piece of paper. Press the hand hard into the paper to take the hand imprint.
Let the paper dry.
Using markers or glue/glitter, make the hand print into an animal.
Have the child tell a story about the animal they created.
This craft is a great tactile activity. It is also a great graphic activity and allows the child to use position in space concepts.
Clapping Hands
Materials Needed:
Craft Foam
Markers
Scissors
Flat stick or old ruler
Glue
Elastic string
Directions:
Trace the right and left hands onto the craft foam, leaving a little wrist area (for gluing later).
Cut out the foam hands.
Turn them over and decorate the hands to look like hands
Spread a little glue on the wrist areas of the foam hands and glue hands about 2-3" down from one end of the stick or ruler, and let the glue dry.
Tie elastic tight around the wrists and secure.
When the student has done a great job, let them give themselves or each other a "hand" by shaking their sticks. The foam hands will hit the center stick and sound like clapping.
This craft is a great bilateral motor activity. It also is great for scissor skill practice and position in space skills. Using the finished product is a great gross motor task.
Pat on the Back Hand
Materials Needed:
Old glove (one of those unmatched ones left from last winter)
Markers, paints or peel off foam stickers
Glue
Yarn
Flat stick or old ruler
Lint or Polyester stuffing
Chop Stick
Directions:
Using markers or stickers, decorate the glove, let dry.
Using the Chopstick, push some lint or stuffing into the fingers of the glove.
Finish filling the glove with more lint or stuffing.
Pipe glue into wrist area of glove.
Stick glove onto stick and push wrist area in, around the stick.
Tie wrist area with yarn to secure glove to stick and let dry.
When a child does a great job, let them give themselves a "pat on the back"
* You can also turn this into a pointer by putting peel-off velcro pieces on the tips of the finger 3, 4 and 5 and the palm of the hand and then fold the fingers over and secure to the palm so only the index finger is pointer out.
This is a great bilateral motor skill activity and using the finished product can be great for body part awareness (where did the hand pat you?).
Hand Bookmark
Materials Needed:
2" by 6" strip of paper
Markers
Laminate paper
Scissors
Peel-off magnetic paper
Directions:
Take the paper strip and fold it in half.
Draw a small hand on either side, and decorate the hands. Unfold paper.
Laminate the finished strip, and cut laminate to within 1/4" of paper.
Secure a small piece of magnetic paper to inside of each side of folded paper.
When child is finsihed reading for the day, slip the fold over the top of the finished page and the next page. The magnets will hold the bookmark in place until the book is picked up again.
This is a great fine motor craft addressing graphic and scissors skills. Using the finished product encourages good organizational skills.
