With the onslaught of technology in our lives, teachers everywhere have noticed a steep decline in the fine motor skills of our students. I have noticed it getting worse over the years, but I feel like last year was one of the worst I’ve seen. I honestly believe we are now seeing the full impact of screen time on our students, and the main impact has been fine motor skills. So I am always looking for ways to build those fine motor skills in the classroom. That’s where our torn paper names come in!
Fine Motor Skills: Torn Paper
At the beginning of the year, we, of course, work a lot on reading our names, recognizing our names, and writing our names. This art project is great for spelling and reading names and working on fine motor skills. And it’s a very easy prep!
You need:
black construction paper
white crayon
copy paper in the colors you want to use (I always match the copy paper to our room’s color scheme or theme!)
Prep the students’ names by writing the names in large letters on black construction paper using a white crayon. I use black paper as the background because it makes the colors pop!
Next, model how to tear small pieces of paper. We spend a lot of time modeling the right size the paper should be. We don’t want big giant pieces, but we don’t want teeny tiny pieces, either! Plus, teeny tiny pieces would take forever!
Then we get to work! These torn paper names help with fine motor skills, and we are also learning about patterns! And we’re getting great practice using our glue sponges!
And the finished product:
We then cut around the names and placed them on a bulletin board in the classroom! This is where they stay all year! (Note: these are not all my students. We had several absent, so they will finish when they return!)
For more ideas and resources, check out these posts:
