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Classroom Activity of the Week:  Stars and Trees

  

              Holiday Themes Re-energize Visual Motor Drills Again

                                                                           Monday, December 13

 

If you have been following this blog, you’ll remember that I spoke with great fondness of Halloween for all the great images children can learn to draw. They gain skill in learning how to draw shapes, put them together and orient them in various ways.  This builds visual motor and visual perceptual skills.  The Decemeber holidays offer another whole group of objects to draw.  Diagonal lines can be tricky and orienting them in various ways can challenge spatial reasoning.  So, ofcourse, I use these shapes whenever I have the opportunity to do so. 

                                   

Note, in this picture, how many errors there are in attempts to draw the diagonal lines correctly.  Practice, practice, practice!  The concept of inverting a triangle and then overlaying it can be quite difficult for some children to grasp.

While these triangles are all oriented the same way, they are suppose to get progressively bigger-another challenge.  Once again, the overlay of shapes can be a big challenge and builds spatial reasoning skills.  In this picture, the child  had mastered the star and added one to the tree top for decoration. Mastery is a wonderful thing and the opportunity to reinforce this is key to learning!

Drawing, then cutting the shapes is another reinforcer of these spatial concepts.  With the ability to physically manipulate the shape, the child has another avenue to cement the concepts being taught.  Notice the notebook.  It is used as a reference. The student practiced drawing the picture first, then used the picture as a model to construct the same picture with the cut out shapes.

              Can you guess where this “Tree” is?  Email the answer to TheMotorStory@gmail.com

                                              

                                                                    

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