Kindergarten - Week 4

This week the kindergarten students played with modelling clay. This was an open ended art assignment, again. They were encouraged to try everything from animals to alphabet letters. After one item was built, it was smashed to make the next thing the student could imagine.

The point of this assignment is to give the students time to work on fine motor skills. These are the skills that allow a person to hold a pencil and write, tie shoe laces, and to do other skills that require the fingers to work together on small and coordinated efforts. Every time a small child gets a hold on some clay or other malleable material (such as playdoh), he/she will spend a lot of effort trying to force the fingers to work together to make recognizable objects. This pays of in large dividends when the child finds he/she is able to then hold a pencil and force it to move in very precise ways to write letters.