Interactive Fine Motor Board

The Background
When I started at my second school back in 2010, I shared a classroom with an occupational therapist who worked at our school a few days a week.  It was then that my interest in OT first began and I began to learn so much.  Including how much my voice carries and how I really needed to learn how to teach quieter! ;)  I was so fortunate to have worked so closely with two amazing occupational therapists during my 4 years in the district.  I hadn't realized how many skills fall under the umbrella of OT and have since realized it may not be the same program in many schools across the country. Our OT's went way beyond the typical fine motor and handwriting skills that they are so often associated with.  The work they did in sensory regulation and behavior within the school setting was amazing.  My current student's needs are less academic and more social, emotional and behavioral. They're also much younger than the students I've worked with recently so I've had to change my approach to teaching.  I need to have engaging, multi-sensory and purposeful activities to keep these little ones paying attention!  I knew I wanted some great fine motor activities, but I also wanted them to be aligned to tasks they would need to do in their daily lives.  Think zippers, buttons, shoelaces, etc...


Let's Cut to the Chase.....
Here is my how-to on making your very own (& incredibly cheap!!) fine motor board.

Materials: ($5)
- piece of wood (I used a 2' x 2' piece of plywood that was 1/2" thick, purchased at Menards for $5)
- sandpaper (optional based on the wood you've chosen)
- paint (again, optional, but it sure makes it look nice!!)
- drill
- GLUE (super glue, hot glue, gorilla glue, all the glue!)
- fine motor objects (This was definitely the most fun part of planning the project.  I went to the Dollar Tree to purchase most of my items and then scoured my house for random objects that would work well.  I also looked online at therapeutic websites for examples of their fine motor boards to get ideas.  There are so many options but I knew I wanted to keep the cost down, so I mostly went with what I had.  See below for an itemized list of my choices.)

Purchased from the Dollar Tree: ($9)
- night light
- 3 outlet wall adapter
- large weekly pill container
- strainer
- dog leash
- dog collar
- coin purse
- crazy straws
- large carabiner

Purchased from Five Below: ($7)
- extendable hand ($2)
- working light switch with light (100% worth the $5!!!)

Menards: ($1)
- 2 screw eyes (roughly 2" long, used to hang the lock and carabiner) ($1)

From my own collection:
- towel rack
- towel
- pinwheel
- magnetic letters
- metal lock w/ key
- pipe cleaners
- contact case
- empty spice container
- snack size plastic container
- small wallet w/ zipper
- clothespins, binder clips and plastic clip from a hanger
- flashcards
- large calculator
- zipper
- yo-yo
- retractable tape measure
- key on a keyring

Total cost:  $22!! 

Steps:
1. Plan it out!  I didn't really use too much of a rhyme or reason, I just wanted to fit everything together nicely.

2. Sand and paint your wood piece.  (I chose to do both to make it extra safe and splinter-free for my little ones.)

3. Start to drill and glue!  Luckily, most pieces were able to be glued.  I used my drill for the screw eyes and to make 3 holes for the 3 outlet wall adapter.  I also drilled holes in the top for the pinwheel and crazy straws.

Things To Consider:
- I had difficulty with gluing some of the plastic pieces onto the painted wood... until someone recommended Gorilla Glue.  I don't know how I've lived this long without it.

Skills Covered:
I couldn't believe how many skills could be covered when I first decided to make this board, but I kept getting more and more ideas!  
- fine motor (obviously!!)
- turn taking
- following directions
- /wh/ questions
- counting money and coins
- calculator skills
- measuring
- shapes
- size
- colors
- numbers
- adjectives
- letter names
- letter sounds
- matching

Can't believe you can incorporate all of these skills into one activity?  Click below to watch how I use the board with my students! 

I think I'm finally rested and ready to give blogging another shot after a 4 year break, ha! :) In all seriousness, I had such high hopes of keeping up with blogging regularly, but life happens and I put it on the back burner.  Since 2012, I've gone from teaching 4th and 5th grade at a suburban elementary school to teaching 5th and 6th grade at an elementary school in Chicago.  This year, I made a giant leap down to kindergarten and second grade and could not be happier to once again be in early primary.  Since the beginning of the year, I've added students in 1st, 3rd and 4th grade and we're having a blast in room 219!!  I have a *much* larger classroom this year which has allowed me the space to bring back a lot of my great teaching tools that I've had in storage for the last year.  That includes my books!! I hated having my 1,000+ classroom library in storage!  Books are meant to be read and reread and reread again! :o)  My caseload this year is a lot different than the past few years and I've been adding in a ton of DIY projects which I have the sudden urge to share here.  I've recently started to explore social media and the online community of teachers and am in constant awe of the way ideas are now shared.  It's amazing how easy it is to connect to teachers all over the country (and world!).  It's left me inspired to be the best teacher I can be.  My hope is that some teachers (or moms! or dads! or siblings! or OT's! or anyone!) can find something here that will be useful in their own lives.  Enjoy!

- Miss Fizzlepatrick

Converting Minutes & Hours

Another common core target that we are working on for 4th grade is converting between minutes and hours.  Using my yard bug as a starting point, I came up with Miss Ticktock who teaches her  little clocks how to find either the minutes or hours for conversion problems.  The first little clock says, "I know the hours, so I multiply by 60!"  The second little clock says, "I know the minutes, so I'll make a chart!"

The chart that the students use is a t-chart much like the one used for teaching inches and feet.  I've also attached an example below:

Converting Inches & Feet

Currently, I am teaching converting inches and feet to my 4th graders.  Here is a poster with prompts on how to solve the problems.

I originally got the idea from a friend who taught her 3rd graders about the 'yard bug' she found in her backyard that has 3 feet.  We don't have that math target so I modified the bug a little.  I taught that the yard bug has 3 feet and instead of toes it has 12 inches on each foot.  The yard bug is teaching her little bugs how to convert inches and feet and always asks, "Do you know the inches or the feet?"  Each little bug has a different answer that helps the student decide what operation to use.  The first little bug says, "I know the feet, so I multiply by 12!"  The second little bug says, "I know the inches, so I'll make a chart!"  Instead of teaching my students how to divide by 12, I taught them to make a t-chart, similar to the one we use for division in Everyday Math.  Here is an example:

I usually have them only go up to about 5 feet or so to start.  

Tools of the Classroom

I think it's only fitting then to have my 2nd blog based on another favorite of mine, which is organization.  I know I'm a better teacher when I'm organized.  Organization helps my day to day activities run smoothly and it's much easier to teach my kids to be organized when I'm organized as well.  I love to sort, color code and label pretty much anything.  I could single handedly keep Avery labels in business.  So far, I've tried many different ways of setting up areas for supplies in my classroom.  I think this time I nailed it and I have a feeling this will be sticking around for awhile.  I don't know how exactly I came up with the idea, but I'm sure it stemmed from my obsession with buying $1 buckets from Target.  Ultimately, I think that I needed a way of using them all so that I could justify buying so many.  I like my organization to be functional in the classroom and I came up with the idea of using a peg board to hang the buckets on the wall.  So, off to Home Depot I went, armed with a very clear picture of how I wanted this to turn out.  I bought a 4x8 peg board and had them cut it to fit the space I would be using.  I got one piece 3x3 to be used as the main supply board.  I then had them cut another 1.5x3 to have a second supply board.  Trying to find the correct hardware to hang the buckets turned out to be a chore and I had much better luck at Ace Hardware.  I bought about 30 hooks and went home to begin my project.  I spray painted the peg board silver so that the colored buckets would really pop.  I labeled each bucket (color coded of course) with the name of the supply it would be holding.  Once the peg board was mounted on the wall, I hung up my buckets, filled them with supplies and was ready to go!  I have to give credit to the occupational therapist that I share a room with for casually saying how it reminded her of tools in a garage.  A lightbulb went off and I came up with the title, "Tools of the Classroom".  If you look closely, you can tell that the letters are actually made of paint samples that I laminated and then die-cutted.  I got this idea from a teacher that my friend follows on pinterest.com.  They make the cutest letters!  That is, if you don't mind raiding the paint department at Home Depot :)  I love that I have one main section of my classroom that houses supplies and that it doesn't take up any desk or table space at all!  I have multiple things of markers, crayons and any other supplies that might be used by multiple students at once.  This is also great because my students usually keep their school supplies in their general education classroom so now I have extras for them to borrow.  I hope you enjoy the finished product!

Have You Filled A Bucket Today?

Well, I figured my first blog could be about my favorite book, Have You Filled A Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud.  It's a great story to teach elementary age children about how we affect each other in our daily decisions.  I use the book as part of my classroom management to keep my kiddos 'filling buckets' each day.  Students are encouraged to write their peers and teachers 'bucket notes' with a thank you, compliment or encouraging message.  I dedicated a huge bulletin board in my room to bucket filling because I think character education should be a big part of any classroom.  Each student has their own tin bucket (thank you Target $1 section, I am obsessed with buying buckets) that they label with their name and decorate.  The buckets in my picture are turned around to protect student names.  I can't encourage teachers enough to go buy this book.  It is fabulous!  They also have a great website full of resources:

http://bucketfillers101.com/