In this activity, we can use rocks to tell time! It’s true…not by shadows and watching the sun as it passes by, but by physically moving and manipulating rocks as a time telling tool. In this rock and learn math activity, we can use rocks found around the home with heavy work input as a clock building time telling activity! This is just one more way to teach kids to tell time through hands on play.
Tell Time Through Rocks
It’s always nice to play and learn with the kids when the supplies are completely free. Learn and play with rocks from your backyard or natures walks with a few fun ideas to Learn using Rocks! You might have seen a few of our other rock activities. (We really have a lot, believe it or not!)
In this activity, though, we are asking kids to lift rocks that offer heavy work input, or proprioceptive input while learning to tell time using a simple rock.
Teach kids for free using rocks!
This post is part of our month-long Learning with Free Materials series where we are sharing learning ideas for homeschoolers and school-extension activities using items that are free or mostly free (i.e. CHEAP or you already have in the home)…and rocks are most certainly free!
This series is part of the 31 Days of Homeschooling Tips as we blog along with other bloggers with learning at home tips and tools. We do have affiliate links in this post for your convenience.
While using rocks in clock building not time telling, but to learn the concepts of time is fun, it’s also functional. Kids can play to learn and learn to play with rocks!
There are a ton of ways to learn at home, either through homeschooling, or as school-based enrichment activities using rocks from your own backyard.
Let’s take a look at more ideas for rocks:
Math with Rocks
Count rocks in a line.
Add and subtract with rocks.
Sort rocks by characteristic.
Arrange rocks and pebbles into patterns with AB, ABA, ABBA, ABAB, and more complex patterns.
Create charts on the ground using rock markers.
Write numbers on rocks as a manipulative in math problems.
Tell Time with rocks.
Teach Time Telling with a Rock Clock
We used smooth rocks to create and build a clock. Clock building and time telling is a fun and common activity for us recently, so building a clock with rocks was a challenge when the rocks didn’t have numbers written on them.
Teach kids to position the “3”, “6”, “9”, and ” 12″ rocks first then fill in the other “numbers”.
You could also write the numbers on the rocks using a (Amazon affiliate link) paint marker. Use twigs to create the minute and hour hands and work on time telling outdoors with nature.
Use smaller pebbles to teach time with rocks. We found smooth pebbles from a garden that worked well as the numbers on a clock.
Kids can move them around to the correct position on the rock clock face. This is a fun hands on activity for kids learning to tell time.
Engineering with Rocks
Rocks are a great material in STEM for kids:
Build towers.
Create bridges using rocks.
Explore balance. How does one rock balance on another. Will a different rock stay put in the same way?
Explore force and movement. How can rocks move items?
Building a small tower of rocks is a great eye-hand coordination and fine motor activity, and you can show kids how to mark shadows from the sun to mark the passing of time.
As the sun moves across the sky and the shadow from the rock tower moves along the ground, kids can associate the passage of time with this visual. Then move the hands on the clock to show how much time has passed.
While teaching time isn’t something that is always addressed in occupational therapy, we can support the need to learn time as it relates to time management and functional task completion. After all, if one can’t note the time on the clock, they can’t be out the door to school or an appointment, resulting in many issues.
OTs do support their clients in the educational space, and sometimes telling time is a challenge, especially for those with executive functioning issues, visual perceptual issues, or cognitive impairments. So in theses cases, OT can intervene to support the educational curriculum or to offer alternatives that help the individual to succeed at their goals.
When working with this clock activity, learners or clients can build on educational goals as well as executive functioning skills.
These kids rock ideas develop many skill areas:
They can learn clock concepts
Participants can manipulate small objects to develop fine motor skills.
Clients or students can use the hands-on approach to develop motor planning and eye-hand coordination skills while learning time to the nearest five minutes
They can develop and learn relationships between time elements.
Participates can learn through play.
Students can develop and create, using rock manipulatives as a models to support learning.
Participates can develop skills and experience in using symbols in learning, organization, working memory, communication, mathematical skills, and more.
How will you use this rock clock activity to teach time or time telling skills through play?
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
Part of executive functioning skills that is so important in every functional task, is teaching time to kids. The ability to tell time on a clock is not easy, and it can be very abstract for some children. However, time telling is a skill needed for activities of daily living and IADLs. In this blog post, you’ll find tips for teaching time skills to kids, and find out how to tell time on a clock using hands-on learning approaches.
Teaching Time to Kids
For parents, the task teaching kids to tell time is just part of parenting. But when we teach kids to tell time, there are many other skill areas to consider.
Learning time on a clock can be very challenging visually and cognitively.
Concepts such as executive functioning, fine motor skills, size awareness, and even handwriting play into learning about time. Here, we’ll cover how occupational therapy plays a role in learning about telling time.
Working on how to tell time on a clock with kids? Try these OT-approved ideas…
Occupational Therapy and telling Time
In occupational therapy, we work on time management as well as other executive functioning skills. Time in OT is an important factor. We also address self-care and any occupation that takes up a person’s day. So, when daily occupations need to be accomplished throughout the day, or in preparation to leave the house, time is a big component.
Time management refers to the ability to estimate how much time one has to complete a task. Time management also includes management of the time one has to complete a task in a given time.
Time management impacts occupational performance because one can overestimate how much time they have to complete a task. Or they can underestimate how long a task takes to complete. Both of these scenarios result in poor performance of the task.
Occupational therapists can address time in these ways:
The amount of time needed to accomplish a task
The amount of time needed to prepare for a task
Completing tasks in a given amount of time
How to tell time on a clock of various types- digital, analog, watch, phone apps, etc.
Each of these areas relate to executive functioning and time management. There are tools and strategies that can help with these areas, such as timers, apps, calendars, planners, task checklists, visual schedules, and focusing on each of the executive functioning skills in a regimented manner (The Impulse Control Journal breaks this down for skill-building).
Occupational therapists in the schools can work with kids on learning to tell time.
For school-based OT practitioners, there can be an added challenge in the time telling saga. Children learning to tell time are tackling a very abstract concept.
Learning to tell Time and Visual Perception
Students that struggle with visual perception can be challenged by worksheets with faces of clocks. This can lead to difficulties in writing clock times or identifying time on the clock.
When it comes to how to tell time on a clock, there are a lot of visual perceptual skills involved!
visual discrimination
form constancy
visual attention
visual memory
Typically, in second grade math, learning to tell time on a clock involves worksheets, packets, and math pages that ask students to match the analog clock to the digital clock.
But in second grade, we may see students on the OT caseload struggling with visual attention, visual memory, visual discrimination, letter and number reversals, form constancy, and other visual processing issues.
The clock face has many visual details that can impact working memory, specifically related to visual discrimination, visual attention, form constancy (many clocks have very different number fonts). Some clocks have Roman numerals that throw another wrench into the learning.
For our learners with visual perception and visual motor integration issues, clock worksheets are a real struggle.
Because of these considerations, and the others listed below, how to teach a child to tell time can vary so greatly depending on the needs of the individual.
Learning to tell time and Handwriting
Using a pencil to write clock times and minute or hour hands onto clock forms.
Second grade math involves many clock worksheets. The pencil skills needed to write time, mark hour and minute hands on paper clocks, and writing numbers can impact teaching time to kids.
You can really work on how to tell time on a clock by targeting the number identification skills.
Number formation is a big issue when it comes to completing those clock worksheets, and an area in which the school-based occupational therapists can support the students on their caseload.
Learning tell time and fine motor skills
Fine motors skills involved with moving clock hands on model clocks in the classroom.
Moving the minute hand and hour hand on a clock model helps kids understand how time moves, how much time is in a day, and how to identify sections of time: hours, minutes, seconds, half-hours, quarter hours, and days.
These models help kids grasp the concept of time. But for the student with fine motor challenges, understanding clocks and telling time on a model clock is a struggle.
To move the clock hands on a model clock, fine motor skills are needed:
Finger isolation
Separation of the sides of the hand
Precision
Graded grasp and movements
Motor planning
The visual of a model clock can become more challenging when these fine motor issues exist.
Learning to tell time and executive function
Time and learning how to tell time on a clock is a big part of executive function…and executive functioning skills plays a major role in telling time.
Kids learn to tell time, typically in second grade, however, without consistent use of analog clocks, kids lose that ability to tell time. When it comes to the time management aspect of executive functioning skills, there is a lot to be said for watching the minute hands tick around the clock as time passes.
The passage of time on a digital clock just doesn’t have the concrete visual impact that the ticking hands has on the face of an analog clock.
Executive functioning skills such as attention, foresight, task completion, and others play a role in telling time and managing time.
We talked about time blindness in our post on adult executive functioning issues. However, time blindness impacts all of us at one time or another, and all ages, too.
Also, the number of minutes in five minute increments and the number of minutes in an hour or quarter hour can be a challenge for those with executive functioning skills to recall. Working memory plays a big part in math skills!
The abstract concept of teaching time on a clock
Kids not exposed to analog clocks. This makes an abstract concept even more abstract! Our kids that need concrete examples and visual cues to learn will struggle with this concept of learning to tell time on a clock.
Other kids need concrete examples in learning. time doesn’t offer that option.
Teaching kids how to tell time can start with the process of discovering the parts of a clock.
Many of our young learners are exposed to only the digital clock of an Iphone, a microwave clock, stove clock, or the digital time shown on a television cable box, for example. The important skill of learning to tell time is just not a part of the typical day for many learners.
However, what is important is the concept of time. We all have daily routines that revolve around the passage of time.
teach how to tell time on a clock with multisensory activity
Below, you’ll find resources for time teaching in the classroom or home. School based occupational therapy professionals can use these concepts and hands-on time activities to support time management needs, or to work in a push-in OT session in school-based OT services when children are learning time in school.
Or, use these interactive telling time activities to support learning how to tell time on a clock as part of the child’s educational curriculum.
A few easy ways to make learning about time more interactive AND supporting development of underlying areas is through the fun activities listed here.
Try some of these clock activity ideas to teach kids how to tell time on a clock:
Use sidewalk chalk to create a large clock. This is a great activity for offering resistive feedback when learning about the hands of the clock
Use a timer to focus on time management and the passage of time needed to complete a given task.
Use clock puzzles
Work on the number of hours on a clock using playdough and a clock playdough mat
Young children can learn about size awareness to understand the big hand and the little hand
Use a hula hoop to create a large clock to focus on motor planning and gross motor skills in a clock game
Teach the passage of time by using a dry erase marker to color on the face of a clock. Students can see how the minute hands moves within the estimated time as they perform the task at hand.
Another clock game is to create a paper clock and use paper hour hand and minute hand to focus on fine motor skills and bilateral coordination skills
Move the hands of a clock and have a dance party. When the clock reaches a certain time, the students can dance.
Play tell time games and other clock games: Ask students what time of day they might eat breakfast, play outside, get on the school bus, etc.
Make a bottle cap clock for movement and learning with time telling (see below)
Teach Time with a Bottle Cap Clock
This bottle cap clock was a fun way to teach my kids how to tell time on a clock. We practiced time telling with recycled bottle caps for hands on learning while building a clock.
My daughter was taught time telling this past year while in the first grade, but it was fun to work on the parts of a clock and to practice time telling to the minute. As she heads into second grade, she’ll be learning to tell time to the minute, so we added a minute component to our time telling with the bottle caps.
To begin this time telling activity, I wrote the numbers 1-12 on bottle caps using a permanent marker. Find a large round placemat/charger and have your child work on positioning the numbers as they appear on the clock.
In this hands-on clock building activity, first show your child how to place the 12, 3, 6, and 9 on the clock face. This is a good way to teach the concept of quarter hours and half hours, as well as quarter after, quarter to, and half-past.
Show them how the other numbers can fit within the numbers 3, 6, and 9 on the clock. The space left between 12 and 3 can hold the numbers 1 and 2 and so on.
Use the marker to write the minute numbers on the opposite side of the bottle caps. So, when they flip over the number one, it will have “5” written on the other side. Number 2 will have “10” written on the other side.
Once they’ve built their clock, they can turn over all of the bottle caps and count out the minutes by fives.
We then used a round glass dish to build the clock.
Use foam craft sticks like for the minute and hour hand. Cut one shorter than the other to teach about size awareness of the different hands on the clock.
Be sure to have your child identify the names of the hour hand and minute hand as part of this learning and clock building activity.
On the glass plate, pour a small amount of water. The added sensory component of the water is fun for a spin on this clock building task, because the bottle caps and the foam craft sticks will stick to the glass dish with the water. Practice moving the hands around to tell different times.
how to tell time on a clock
After you’ve targeted the underlying skills outlined above, and used the multisensory clock activities above, you can move on to how to tell time on a clock with worksheets and real clocks!
Target skills like:
hour hand
minute hand
second hand
number placement on a clock
telling time on the hour
telling time on the half hour
telling time on the quarter hour
learning about elapsed time
What are your favorite ways to teach kids how to tell time on a clock?
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
In this rainbow math activity, we used popsicle sticks to make a rainbow hundreds chart puzzle that was perfect for my kindergarten and second grade kiddos. (And, it would be a nice hands-on math activity for first grade, too.) This is a multisensory math idea that combines fine motors skills with the colors of the rainbow to teach kids about groups of tens in a hundreds chart.
Combining numbers into groups of ten and those tens into hundreds is a math concept that is so important for so many math concepts. We worked on fine motor skills to build the tens columns and combined them into hundreds to work on a few math skills.
A punch like this one is perfect for building gross hand grasp strength. BUT, if you want this crafting project to move by faster than a snail’s pace, use a 3 Hole Punch. It’s perfect for working proprioception to the arms. Fold paper into columns and slide it into the punch to get a bunch of holes punched at once.
To make the rainbow puzzle: Punch a ton of holes from the white paper.
Sort the popsicle sticks into rainbow order on the table surface. Kids can work on visual scanning and visual perceptual skills for this task as they look for colors of the rainbow.
Next, Swipe the glue along the craft sticks and count out ten holes from the white paper. This is a super counting activity for kids to practice counting ones and grouping into tens.
The fine motor work going on here is fantastic, too. Picking up those itty bitty paper holes is a precision grasp workout.
Punch extra holes from the colored construction paper.
And, you’re done! Practice counting the numbers using the tens craft sticks. Arrange them into groups of ten sticks to create a hundreds chart.
Multisensory Math activities
Use this rainbow hundreds chart puzzle for a variety of hands-on math activities:
Sort the popsicle sticks into rainbow order.
Count the dots by tens
Add up all of the colors that are the same, being sure to count by tens.
Build two and three digit numbers
Practice addition with and without regrouping using the manipulatives as counters.
Practice subtraction with and without regrouping using the craft stick manipulatives.
Build a two or three digit number and ask your child to name the number.
Ask your child to name a number and then build a two or three digit number.
How would you play and learn with this rainbow hundreds chart puzzle and math popsicle stick hundreds chart?
Take multisensory learning further with the rainbow theme. Try our new Colors Handwriting Kit. It now includes a bonus pack of fine motor, visual motor, and directionality pencil control activities.
Rainbow Handwriting Kit– This resource pack includes handwriting sheets, write the room cards, color worksheets, visual motor activities, and so much more. The handwriting kit includes:
Write the Room, Color Names: Lowercase Letters
Write the Room, Color Names: Uppercase Letters
Write the Room, Color Names: Cursive Writing
Copy/Draw/Color/Cut Color Worksheets
Colors Roll & Write Page
Color Names Letter Size Puzzle Pages
Flip and Fill A-Z Letter Pages
Colors Pre-Writing Lines Pencil Control Mazes
This handwriting kit now includes a bonus pack of pencil control worksheets, 1-10 fine motor clip cards, visual discrimination maze for directionality, handwriting sheets, and working memory/direction following sheet! Valued at $5, this bonus kit triples the goal areas you can work on in each therapy session or home program.
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
We had some fish learning activities based on a penguin theme going on for a while around here. Penguin activities are so much fun for learning and play! This fish learning activity was a fun way to explore letters, words, and numbers AND incorporate our penguin theme. We did this learning and counting activity one day after we made our penguin themed snacks. Add it to the penguin yoga activity and penguin deep breathing activities to round out full-body movement and learning.
Fish learning activity
Penguin math is fun when it comes to catching fish for penguin food! Use these ideas for a polar bear theme, too.
We used sheets of scrapbook paper and construction paper to make fish shapes. Kids can cut these out to work on scissor skills.
Next, we drew a pond on a large sheet of crafting paper. I wrote words, letters, or numbers on the fish. On some, I attached a paperclip or clip. We used a net (from a Bug Net toy) or a fishing pole from a puzzle set to scoop up the fish like a penguin would.
You could also use a magnetic fishing pole from a puzzle set to catch the fish with clips on them. We scooped them in numerical order or in alphabetical order and then in random order too.
How fun would this be to read a few fun penguin books and then do some fishy counting to continue the penguin theme?
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
Today, I have a hands on learning activity for second grade using a polar bear game. This number line games for 2nd grade could actually be used in any age or grade level math, however, the polar bear craft that we used for a second grade math game turned out to be a fun way to work on base ten operations and adding 10’s and 100’s to two and three digit numbers. In second grade, adding two digits is a big deal! This polar bear activity is a fun two digit addition games for 2nd grade (and other grades).
To make the polar bear craft, glue the small white crafting pom poms to the white pom pom. These will become the polar bear’s ears. Glue the black pom pom to the bear’s face. This will become the nose. Add the googly eyes and your polar bear craft is done.
There are a lot of fine motor skills being addressed in the making of this polar bear craft: pincer grasp, eye-hand coordination, in-hand manipulation, bilateral coordination, and separation of the sides of the hand.
This polar bear craft would pair nicely with our snowball math activity, designed to inspire hands-on learning with gross motor skills. The polar bear math activity described here would also go well with our Winter Fine Motor Kit, which is loaded with polar bear themed fine motor activities and crafts designed to target and strengthen specific fine motor skills.
Polar Bear Game
We played a polar bear game to boost second grade math skills by working on adding 10’s and 100’s to numbers along the number line. I showed my daughter how to use a straw to blow the craft pom pom polar bear craft across the table and along the number line.
We started the bear at zero and tried to see how far she could get the bear to go down the number line. I then asked her a few questions that I had written out on cards:
What is your digit?
Is your digit even or odd?
What is 10 more?
What is 10 less?
What is 100 more?
We played a few times and then tried a few different extension ideas for this activity.
Starting at where the polar bear lands, count on by 2’s, 5’s, 10’s, and 100’s.
Start out by saying “We’ll add 100 to the number where your bear lands.” Then, practice counting backwards by 2’s, 5’s, 10’s, and 100’s.
Use two polar bear crafts to practice single and double digit adding and subtracting.
This polar bear game would be a great way to work on aspects of numbers with a hands-on approach to learning. Use it along with this Snowman Math-Composing and Decomposing Numbers activity.
Polar Bear Sensory Activity
This activity doubles as a polar bear sensory activity as it offers oral motor skills work. By blowing the straw to move the craft pom poms, children experience proprioceptive input through their mouth and cheeks. This sensory input is calming and can be a regulating tool to help kids focus following the heavy work through their mouth.
Using the straw to blow the polar bear across the table requires some “oomph” because of the weight of the crafting pom poms. Blowing through a straw is a great way to provide proprioception through a winter-themed oral motor activity. This is a fun activity for sensory seekers, kids who seek out oral motor input, and children who tend to fidget during learning or homework.
If blowing the straw requires too much effort for your child, or you would like to try a fine motor activity, practice flicking the polar bear across the table. Keeping the bear on the table requires precision of fine motor skills, making it another way to use the polar bear craft in therapy and hands-on learning.
Grab the Winter Fine Motor Kit, with 100 pages of done-for-you therapy activities, including polar bear themes. Grab it now before January 9th and you get a bonus of 3 fine motor slide deck activities.
These reproducible activity pages include: pencil control strips, scissor skills strips, simple and complex cutting shapes, lacing cards, toothpick precision art, crumble hand strengthening crafts, memory cards, coloring activities, and so much more.
Play Dough Roll Mats- Use the 6 play dough mats to develop fine motor skills and hand strength needed for tasks like coloring with endurance, manipulating small items, and holding a pencil. Kids can roll small balls of play dough with just their fingertips to strengthen the intrinsic muscles.
Pinch and Grip Strength Activities- Challenge fine motor skills with polar bear and winter themed glue skills page, tong/tweezer activities, lacing cards, finger puppets, 1-10 counting clip cards, 10 toothpick art pages, find & color page, 5 crumble art pages.
Pencil Control Worksheets- Connect the arctic animals or winter items and stay on the pencil path lines while mastering pencil control.
Arctic Animal Cutting Strips and Scissor Skills Sheets- Work on scissor skills to cut along lines to reach the arctic animal friends or snowflakes, snowmen, and mittens. This is a great way to strengthen the motor and visual skills needed for cutting with scissors.
Handwriting Sensory Bin Materials- You and the kiddos will love these A-Z uppercase and lowercase tracing cards with directional arrows, 1-10 tracing cards with directional arrows, 1-10 counting cards.
“I Spy” Modified Paper- Includes: Color and find objects in two themes: winter items and arctic animals; 3 styles of modified paper for each theme: single rule bold lines, double rule bold lines, highlighted double rule.
Fine Motor Handwriting Sheets- Try the 4 Find/Color/Copy pages in different styles of modified paper, rainbow writing pages in 3 styles of modified paper.
Write the Room Activities- Using a winter theme, these Write the Room cards includes: 5 lowercase copy cards, 5 uppercase copy cards, 5 lowercase tracing cards, 5 uppercase copy cards, 6 cursive writing copy cards, 2 styles of writing pages.
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
Many parents of preschoolers have questions about preparing for kindergarten. There are kindergarten checklists and loads of resources online designed to address kindergarten readiness. One area that parents might miss when getting ready for kindergarten is the concept of executive functioning skills.
Executive functioning skills develop from very early in childhood! These skills can easily be developed through fun, age-appropriate play. Sound familiar? Combining learning and play in kindergarten is essential to build skills with an age appropriate awareness and at developmental levels. This is the exact way that children should be preparing for kindergarten!
Kindergarten Readiness
There is immense amount of pressure for children to be ready for the academic demands of school, even from kindergarten. From the moment they walk in the door, most kindergartners are pushed to be “little sponges” of the academic content to meet standards. However, most of us recognize that this may not be the most appropriate approach to take. Finding engaging executive functioning activities can be tricky. The ideas here should be a great start to add to your kindergarten lesson plans or use in kindergarten preparations.
However, there are more child-friendly things that parents can do to help their children get ready for kindergarten. Provide children with opportunities to be independent! Teach them the steps to wash their hands (initiation, working memory, shifting, monitoring), how to blow their nose (initiation, working memory, and monitoring), and letter recognition (working memory). Teach them how to follow directions (impulse control, working memory, and shifting).
PREPARING FOR KINDERGARTEN WITH EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING SKILLS
Working on some kindergarten prep through play can involved executive functioning skills at the same time. Start here to understand exactly what executive functioning skills entail, but when it comes to kindergarten aged children, here are some of the executive functioning skills that can be addressed through play as well as tasks that will help them prepare for kindergarten:
HandWriting in Kindergarten
Amazon affiliate links are included below.
Be sure to start by reading our resource on name writing for kindergarten to support the handwriting and fine motor skills needed in kindergarten, as this is a new skill for many 5 year-olds that are picking up a pencil for the first time. (Or preschool students that were rushed into pre-writing tasks.
There are many ways to integrate reading and writing preparation into play. Have your child match uppercase and lowercase letters in games or at the store. This encourages working memory (what letter they need to look for). Games like Zingo are great for teaching sight words in a fun way while also requiring a child to use their impulse control, shifting, and working memory.
Early math and science skills can be fun and easy to integrate into play! If the weather is conducive, try hopscotch, saying the numbers out loud as you jump! For mental flexibility, change the rules of how they go through the series: hop on one foot, jump on two feet, switch feet, and so on. For older children or those who know their evens and odds, have them only jump on the odds or only on evens.
For science, create simple science experiments, like vinegar and baking soda volcanos! This requires initiation, monitoring, impulse control, shifting, and planning/organizing.
More kindergarten math activities to build executive function:
Play is critical, but with the push to be ready for academics, play is getting pushed to the side However, without play, children suffer. They lack the ability to find joy in learning.
Outdoor play provides the opportunity for children to develop their executive functioning while participating in child-led adventures! Taking a bike ride or a walk around the community, or even playing basketball in a driveway, requires a child to demonstrate strong impulse control and monitoring skills for safety. Red light, green light is also a great opportunity to work on impulse control.
Outdoor play also encourages children to take risks while being aware of their surroundings. Whether determining if cars are coming, stranger danger, or appropriate clothing to wear outside, this is an incredible opportunity to encourage executive functioning development!
Can’t play outside? Build a fort! Planning/organizing, initiation, shifting, time management, and working memory are critical for this.
Kindergarten play ideas to build executive function
Games and Activities to build executive functioning skills in kindergarten
Some family-friendly games include Outfoxed (initiation, working memory, monitoring, planning/organizing, and impulse control) and Sneaky Snacky Squirrel Game.
For less structured activities, think about making something in the kitchen, like baked goods. Making slime with a slime kit is another engaging way to build executive functioning skills.
For a less structured executive functioning activity, try making a bracelet from a bracelet kit that involves patterns or low-level direction-following.
For kindergarten readiness, focus on fun! This is a time of extensive growth, including in the area of executive functioning.
For more executive functioning activities, grab this Executive Functioning Activity Guide. It’s full of strategies to address common executive functioning areas that impact working memory, attention, impulse control, organization, and more.
This fine motor activity is one that works on the super small motor skills of the hands. We’ve shared tips and ideas for building precision of grasp and release before, and this is one more way to build those skills, with a math and engineering twist. This is a fine motor math activity with major benefits.
If your kids are anything like mine, then they love blocks. If I pull out a bin of blocks, then we’ve got ramps, castles, and houses all over the living room floor. They are an imagination booster and it really is so much fun to see where the creativity goes with just a bin of blocks. The OT in me loved this activity for it’s creative math twist and for it’s fine motor power punch!
You might also want to check out our math maze activity for more hands-on math fun.
What is precison of grasp and release?
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Precision handling of very small items with controlled movement is necessary for dexterity in functional grasp. To manipulate items with small motor motions, the hand needs to be in a functional position. The index and middle digits must oppose the thumb with tip-to-tip finger contact and interphalangeal joint range of motion. opening and closing the grasp on items with control is precision and allows the hand to grasp small objects from a refined area and enables the hand to release objects in a specific location.
Precision in of grasp and release allows us to pick up a specific colored bead from a tray of many colors and place it on a string. We used foam blocks and small balls of clay to practice precision of grasp and release.
Fine Motor Precision Activity
Rolling balls of clay develops the intrinsic muscle strength of the hands. It opens up the thumb web space and encourages flexion of the interphalangeal joints in the fingers. Once we had rolled a collection of small clay balls, we used them to work on precision grasp and release with the foam blocks.
One area that my kids have discussed in both kindergarten and second grade this year is the term vertices. We talked about the number of vertices on different shapes and placed a small clay ball on each vertice. Carefully placing the clay on each corner required precision to pick up the clay and to place it precisely on the corner.
Math Engineering Activity
Once we had each corner covered with clay, we thought it would be fun to engineer a tower. It was fun to explore the different ways we could build the towers using graded controlled movements to prevent the whole tower from falling.
This was such a fun exercise in fine motor skills and one we’ll be doing again!
Looking for more learning activities with foam blocks? Try these:
I love reusing recyclables in crafts and activities. One thing my kids might love even more is science and STEM activities. We decided to use some materials we had in the recycle bin to make a lever and fulcrum. This is a perfect STEM activity to do with the kids over the summer to promote learning, creativity, and problem solving. The Summer Slide is a real thing and simple, easy projects like this one are fun ways to build skills as a family. Our Lever and Fulcrum STEM activity led to cheers with all four of the kids. This is a fun STEM fine motor activity kids will love.
And when the kids are cheering for science, engineering, and math, it is perfectly OK for Mom to do an inner cheer, too.
Recycled Materials Lever and Fulcrum STEM Activity
There are so many items found in your recycle bin that can be used in STEM activities. Today, we pulled out a few materials to build a lever and fulcrum. We used a recycled chopstick, a toilet paper tube, and two coffee pods.
To make the lever and fulcrum: Poke a hole in each of the coffee pods. We used a sharp skewer to do this. you will want the holes to be at the same height on each pod. Insert one end of the chop stick into each pod. Finally, fold the toilet paper tube into a triangular shape. The cardboard tube will be the fulcrum and the chop stick can rest evenly on the tube and act as a lever.
Now for the fun part: It was time to play and learn with our STEM activity!
We added crafting pom poms to each cup and counted how many were needed to keep the lever even.
We talked about the distance between the ends of the chop stick and how the fulcrum needed to be in the center in order for the lever to be even.
We tried moving the fulcrum and measured the distance between the ends of the chop stick and the fulcrum.
When the fulcrum was off center, we counted how many craft pom poms were needed to make the lever even again.
I was kind of amazed at how much all four of my kids were totally absorbed by this STEM activity. It was enough to make me smile (and cheer some more, on the inside!) for their love of science, technology, engineering, and math.
There is nothing like learning in the great outdoors. The breeze in your hair, the birds tweeting, and bugs getting involved in the outdoor classroom. Learning outside with the kids is a fun twist on the everyday math homework! We love to spend time outdoors. And, I love to sneak learning activities into our play. This Math Scavenger Hunt idea was a fun way to practice second grade math concepts like adding and subtracting two digit numbers. Our math rocks made this move and learn activity extra fun.
We’ve shared quite a few outdoor learning activities on the blog before. The favorite in our back yard was this pre-reading literacy activity. We even used a few of the same hiding places for today’s math activity.
Outdoor Math Activity for Kids
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To start with, we used rocks to create math manipulatives. These pebbles were collected from a trip to our camp this past summer and painting them was a fun way to recall summer memories. You can use rocks of any size or shape for this activity. Just be sure to use acrylic paint so that the color doesn’t flake off of the rock’s surface. I love this brand of acrylic paints for it’s price! We painted both sides of the rocks in different colors. You can paint your rocks all one color or mix it up a bit. We went for the colorful approach. For the numbers, I used a paint marker. Be sure to allow the paint to dry before writing on the numbers.
When the paints have all dried, you are ready to take these math rocks outside for learning and play!
Outdoor Learning Math Ideas
We played a few different games with our math rocks.
I hid a bunch of the rocks in a small area of our yard. I had my second grader search for two rocks at a time. When she brought them back, I asked her to add or subtract the numbers.
We used specific numbers in a small area of the yard. I named a large number and had her find two rocks that added up to that number. (We have enough rocks that we were able to number them 0-100 using both sides of the rocks, so this worked out easily.)
Using smaller numbers, I showed her two numbers. She had to go off and look for the missing number in a math subtraction equation.
How would you use these math rocks to play?
Looking for more outdoor learning ideas? Try some of these:
. It’s perfect for working proprioception to the arms. Fold paper into columns and slide it into the punch to get a bunch of holes punched at once.
