Fine Motor Bead Play with Tractors

(Affiliate links included for your convenience!) 

Happy Fine Motor Fridays! We have been loving playing with our beads from CraftProjectIdeas. Several Fridays ago, we enjoyed a fun invitation to play with bristle blocks and beads. One of my favorite things about offering little ones invitations to play and explore is that often the activity continues long after the camera stops snapping. That activity inspired K to incorporate his tractors in our play! 

For this invitation, we used Pastel Faceted Crystal Beads. white pony beads, and wood beads from CraftProjectIdeas. Kingston chose to include his Green Toys Tractor and one of the tractors from his John Deere 5" Monster Treads Value Pack (Which, for the record, is an INCREDIBLY cool set! We use it for all kinds of things!) We used orange Take & Toss Snack Cups as our unloading stations.

Working with loose parts and small objects is fantastic for fine motor skill building. K picked up the tiny beads and moved them to the beds of his tractors. Then he unloaded the beads into the orange cups. This spawned all kinds of pretend play. We pretended that he was harvesting fruit and vegetables from the garden (the purple plate) and putting them on the tractor to bring to the store. Kingston unloaded all of the fruit and veggies at the Farmers Market (the orange cups of course!). 

Then we worked with the orange tractor! We practiced counting the beads and sorting them by size, color, and type of bead. The orange tractor was more difficult to dump, as the back part had to be removed, so K worked to take it apart and dump the beads back where they belonged.

He spent quite a bit of time just running his hands through the beads and practicing transferring to the different receptacles.

Tip: If you have a little one who is crawling and/or picks up objects off the floor and puts them in their mouth, make sure you use a dropcloth or sheet underneath your table to catch any loose beads. K dropped lots of beads on the ground while he was exploring, and that made cleanup much easier after. Now I don't have to worry about Bentley picking a bead up off the ground and putting it in his mouth!

I am excited to see what activity K can come up with to utilize these beads in the future! 

Don't forget to check out the other awesome Fine Motor Fridays posts:

Alphabet Light Table Play from And Next Comes L

Name Recognition using Beads from Powerful Mothering

Popper Ball Game from Little Bins for Little Hands

Watercolor Drip Painted Easter Egg Garland from Stir the Wonder

5 Easy Easter Games Using Plastic Easter Eggs on Lalymom

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The products from CraftProjectIdeas featured in this post were given to us for free. 

They offer phenomenal projects and fantastic ideas on both their website and their Facebook page.