My son absolutely loves using “adult” real equipment: instruments, kitchen utensils, office supplies, even my makeup brushes. Anything that I use myself. Many of those tools can actually do a great job developing his small motor skills, so I love finding a chance for him to use it. I even set up a shelf in my kitchen closet filled with his own “adult” tools: a little water pitcher, salad tongs, spoons, dough roller, bowls and cups of different sizes. He loves it!!! Montessori-style, I also added a tray and a little mat to place underneath his tools, to avoid slippery surface.

So, what do we do with that? You can find here a few great developmental exercises we came up with.

First, teach your child to prepare the “working area”: to gather the things that he will need on a tray and to bring them on the table (ideally, kid size table, but ours’ is in another room on a carpet, so adult table seemed like a simpler solution at the moment), to unroll (and roll it back) the mat and to place his belongings on top. Even rolling the mat is quite a task for the little fingers! It improves their coordination and gives kids a sense of pride for being trusted with adult’s tools, being trusted to set up and clean up their own environment and being able to “perform their experiments” in the neat and organized environment. Now, the fun begins!

• Fishing in a salad bowl.

Fishing in a Salad Bowl

Supplies that I used:

• Large salad bowl
• 2 smaller bowls
• Large perforated spoon
• Salad tongs
• Packaging foam bits of different colors or something similar (I happened to have EnviroBlox, so we used that. Since EnvirBlox pieces are so multicolor, our range of activities was greater.)

Activities:

1. Place the foam bits into the large salad bowl and let the child transfer all of the pieces from a salad bowl into another bowl with a perforated spoon.
2. Place the pieces back into a salad bowl and let the child sort (using perforated spoon) the foam bits by color, e.g. white ones into the left bowl, and green ones into the right. Since EnviroBlox is so multicolored, we also sorted them by “warm” and “cool” colors – reds, oranges, yellows in one bowl; blues and greens into the other.
3. Let the child practice sorting tasks using salad tongs instead of a spoon.
4. Let the child pick a few foam or EnviroBlox pieces, and just let him play with those! With foam pieces, you can let him do some projects, by gluing them together into some interesting sculptures (foam pieces are so oddly shaped, that making doggies and kitties can be challenging, so let your kid come up on her own with subjects – it doesn’t have to resemble anything familiar. It can be just his abstract creation. Since my son had EnviroBlox, I just dampened the sponge and they stuck together – he was busy making necklaces and bracelets for everyone, then mixing them altogether, then tearing apart, then connecting all left over pieces… it surely looked like fun).

Once your child is done, teach him how to clean up after himself, how to roll the mat, put the tray back, how to place all his tools neatly back on his shelf (or in a dishwasher, or on a sink, or leave them on the counter for you, if it is your tools that were part of the experiment).

My son absolutely loved this activity every step of the way!

Please share if you know other fun things to do for kid’s development!