Preschool Science and Motor Development with Bunny Inspired Activities for Indoor or Outdoor

Welcome to Becca's Heart for ECE blog! This post features a dual purposed activity to support science and motor development.

I'm Becca S, a teacher with both FACS degree/teaching experience as well as Elementary with Early Childhood degree. I have lead teacher daycare experience with 3-5+ year olds and private Christian kindergarten teaching  experience. After all those previous years, this winter and early spring, I applied and received ECE endorsement by ISBE (Illinois). Wahoo!! That's for Birth to Grade 3! I'm super excited about this. I took the professional exam and scored 278 out of 300 so I was stoked about that and then ISBE evaluated my transcripts and approved the endorsement. Yea!! Now that you know a little more about me, let's focus on the springtime idea for science and physical skills.

For the younger ECE children, providing a wide range of activities that can develop both fine and gross motor skills are very important. Fine or small motor are those finger gripping and pinching skills that help with holding a pencil, picking up tiny objects, and moving a paintbrush. Gross motor skills in this activity will mostly be arm movements like underhanded tosses. This activity can be used to let children share what they know about rabbits and bunnies OR the glass beads can be a color code for water and land features of the Earth's surface.

Earth Day option: Blue Beads are tossed at a distance after answering a question about water or oceans. A basic early content in science and particularly for Earth & Space Science is our planet Earth's surface is made of 2 parts: land and water. With older ECE children in 2nd grade and 3rd grade introducing them to the terms of continents and oceans will be cognitively more developmentally appropriate. With younger ECE children in the preschool to 1st grade range the Earth's surface should be referred to in terms of land and water. Each child can share where they've seen water: sink, bathtub/shower, garden hose, puddle, creek, pond, lake, river, and others.

Before sharing more of the educational components let's get this versatile location activity ready=

Set-up for this activity:

Have small tarp...will travel! If you have a large open indoor space you could use a tablecloth or shower curtain instead but a clean tarp could still be used inside.

This 5.5' x 7.5' was only about $2.50 with tax and coupon/sale at Harbor Freight Tools, so this was a great bargain multi-use purchase!

Below: Rabbit tray with green glass beads; read below for 2 options for usage:

Earth Day option: Green glass beads can represent land so before a child tosses a green glass bead she/he must share something found on land, a feature of the land portion of Earth. Children might suggest grass, dirt, hills, mountains, yard, and others.

Fine motor skill focus: As soon as I saw these Easter/spring rabbit deviled egg trays, I wasn't thinking food display but for the egg-shaped divots to hold marbles or glass beads or pom pons. At Dollar Tree was where I purchased these 2 trays and the flower arranging supply of decorative blue glass beads. Children can stand around the perimeter of the tarp. Remember the dimensions are small enough for this to be a good distance for this age group to get some underhanded and overhanded tossing practice (gross or large motor skills).

Bonus benefit: What is another HUGE important skill for writing and reading is the eye-hand coordination that the children will build when they are eyeing which tray to toss to and which divot might hold their glass bead!!! I LOVE a two-fer!!!

Animal focus: Science-wise, the teacher can guide questions not only about distance and range of motions but could have children take turns tossing AFTER they answer a science content question about rabbits. That would mean this would have to be a follow-up activity AFTER story time book(s) about bunnies. (Rabbits' babies are called bunnies. Rabbits can hop.)

Give each child in your group 5-10 opportunities before things get too wild or boring. When the trays and beads are collected back, have 1 final gross motor skill practice but this time for their legs by leading a bunny hop around the perimeter of the tarp!!!!

Oh what fun learning and acting like rabbits!  Be creative and resourceful. Look at household items differently and see how they can be used to help your little ones build physically and cognitively.

Teaching and learning in the USA heartland,
Becca S

BS Secondary w/ Home Economics proficiency
M. Ed. Elementary w/ ECE emphasis
IL endorsements: FACS grades 6-12, Birth to Grade 3/ECE
IL approval: General science grades 5-8