I put everything into thinking of the best fine motor experiences I could possibly devise into the book, but having published it I’ve unearthed a few more.

Here are five more scintillating ideas that will get almost all children fully engaged…

1.Spoon Balancing

Sounds a bit crazy this one, but the children really loved it when we did these.

I got a ball of rubber bands, and stuck some spoons in. It looked a bit like this:

It was a balancing game. They had to try and balance different things on the spoons.

All sorts of things are possible, such as:

• Who can balance the largest thing?
• Who can balance more than one thing on a spoon
• How quickly can you fill the spoons

Hours of fun!

2. Geoboards

Geoboards are quite a well-known resource, but have you ever thought about all the weird and wonderful ways you can use them?

For example, in the picture above, there are three ideas of many. You can:

• Make pictures (for example, like the rocket above)
• You can make different shapes
• You can make patterns (like the white and black bobbles in a repeating line)

You can make geoboards yourself, or you can buy them quite cheaply.

To make them, just attach screws into a wooden surface, such as a wood slice, or a board. You can attach them in regular lines, or in more of a mish-mash arrangement.

You need something like rubber bands, loom bands, or hair bobbles to them use on the geoboards.

Children love just to experiment in a free-form way, and that is definitely the way to start.

But to add more structure, you can try all sorts of ideas, such as:

• Counting – roll a dice and put that number of items on the geoboard
• Make different types of a shape. For example, make lots of different types of triangles. What are the smallest/largest/thinnest/widest you can make?
• Adding – roll two dice, for example getting 3 and 2. Put 3 bands of one colour on the board, and 2 or another. How many do you have?
• Make ‘silly’ shapes. Stretch out a loom band so it makes a shape with shape with twelve or fifteen sides, that might look at bit like this:

3.Tiny Box Champions

This is mega simple.

You find some kind of really small boxes or containers. Something like match boxes would be perfect, or you could use something like egg cups.

Each child has one container, whatever you use.

The idea is that then they go off and find things to put into them.

Different games are possible, such as:

• How many different things can you find that all fit inside?
• Who can get the most tiny things inside?
• How many different colours of things can you fit inside?

4. More Chalkboard Ideas

I had a quick brainstorm of some extra things to paint with chalkboard paint that I didn’t include in the book.

Some of these include:

1. Board books – you paint just the cover, or the cover and the back. Then the children can design their own cover, write a title, or a blurb, and all that kind of thing
2. Umbrellas (a bit random!)

• Wooden spoons – you’ve probably seen spoons with characters on, and spoons with chalkboard paint on are great for children to design their own. They might look at bit like this:

These would be fantastic for role-play, small world, and taking on the voices of characters.

5. Magic Wands

There are lots of ways you can make these, and which children can resist a bit of magic!

The basic idea is to get some sticks from outside. You twist some wool or other material around them to make them look like real magic wands:

You can jazz them up by:

• Securing leaves or flowers to them
• Creating patterns
• Creating spell books for them

Conclusion

All of these ideas are very much the tip of the iceberg, and are just an impetus to get you inspired.

There are thousands of magnificent activities waiting to be dreamed up in the magical world of early education.