Description & Learning Objectives
The transferring activities that the children do within the classroom help to refine their eye-hand coordination, strengthen the muscles of the hand and wrist, foster concentration, and provide the child with the opportunity to practice daily activities.
Materials
Child size spoon or scoops, a variety of materials/objects that can be used to transfer from one container to another. The tools and materials can be switched to something more complex depending on the child’s capabilities. For example: switching from a spoon to using a pair of child-sized tongs, materials changing from large pom-poms to dry rice and even switching from dry materials to using water instead.
Observations & Findings
Transferring is a great activity to help children with their fine motor skills. They are able to use a child-sized spoon or scoop to pick up the materials and transfer them from one container to another. This helps foster their eye-hand coordination skills as well as strengthen their hand & wrist muscles. Children begin to learn that they may need to move their hands & wrists a certain way in order to achieve the results they want.
While doing this activity, children tend to concentrate on what they are doing and learn what they need to do to successfully transfer the objects from one container to another. Whether they are looking around the room, at their hands or at the container they wish to put things in, they start to understand that the amount of concentration they use while doing the activity will affect the outcome of what happens. Through practice, children are able to concentrate and focus on the task they are doing at the moment. The more children do these types of transferring activities, the more they will grow and build the life skills they need as they become older. Changing the materials and exposing children to a variety of different types of transferring activities will help them acquire different skills needed to accomplish various tasks. Transferring with a spoon will help them with eating; transferring with tongs will help them with serving or picking up objects using a particular tool; and transferring with a cup or small jug will help them with pouring. All of these experiences will help them build the foundation they need to do more complex things as they become more skilled.
