Children are naturally curious people. They learn through exploration. Invitations to play are simply materials set out for children to explore in a creative and non-directed way. Invitations to play or create are perfect for any age, but I especially love them for toddlers. Little Miss loves exploring new materials so in honor of Thanksgiving, I purchased some feathers and grabbed a colander from our cupboards and set up this Thanksgiving Fine Motor Invitation to play for her.

Thanksgiving Fine Motor Invitation To Play

Set Up & Materials

When setting up play invitations, you want to provide the materials and leave the rest up to the child. The goal of play invitations is for the children to learn through exploring the materials. So for this Thanksgiving invitation, I simply laid out a colander and some feathers and watched her explore. The original colander I laid out actually had holes that were too small for our feathers, which Little Miss quickly realized, so we ended up bringing out a different colander for her to explore sticking the feathers in.  

Invitations do not show your children how to play, but rathers gives them the invitation to play with them in whatever way they would like and to explore different ways to play.

Thanksgiving Invitation To Play

Little Miss had never seen or touched feathers before this experience so before she began messing with the colander she played around with the feathers and explored them. Then she soon started exploring them with the colander. She immediately tried to place the feathers into the red colander, but when she couldn't, she flipped the colander over and start putting all the feathers inside. I loved watching her process and seeing how she chose to play. I allowed her to explore in her own way for quite a while. I then asked her if she would like me to play too. She immediately handed me a feather and I showed her how to stick the feathers in the holes. The only problem, which Little Miss realized right away, was that the red colander in the picture above actually had holes that were too small for the feathers we had especially for someone who is still working on those fine motor skills. So we bought out the green one instead and then Little Miss went to town sticking the feathers in. 

 

She loved sticking them in the holes and after she had several in the colander she loved pulling them back out. Because a couple of the feathers had bigger stems it was harder for her to just pull them out. She quickly became frustrated. This is where I stepped in and helped teach her that she needed to use one hand to hold the colander while she pulled the feathers with the other one. She didn’t want to do this at first, but after she realized that holding the colander helped her she was all over holding it down. 

 

She loved playing with this activity and beyond the fine motor practice, she learned and practiced many other valuable skills while playing. Win Win for this teacher mama.