Preschool Dexterity and Counting

My preschooler is already really good at holding a pen and she can write (scribble) for a gooooooood long while as she fills paaaaaaages in her notebooks.  But that doesn't mean she couldn't use a good finger workout to build up those fine motor skills! Right?

So here's a look at a fun activity we did this week to do just that!


I strung a piece of thin rope across our school room and taught her how to pinch a clothes pin to hang up socks.  Sounds easy.  It took lots of practice for her to get it.  Lots.

It got a lot easier when I showed her how to just flop the sock over the line before pinning it so that she didn't have to focus on holding the sock toe up to the line while at the same time squeezing the pin and catching the sock in the pin's grip before it fell to the floor.  Yeah.  Focusing on one hard task instead of two is usually best for preschoolers :)

We extended the activity by counting the socks as well.  She does pretty good until she gets to the teens and then she just creates her own totally unique number system.