Try these skill-building crafts with your child

You can enhance your child’s school readiness skills by doing these crafts:

  • Fruit Kabob: Prepare a plate of bite-size pieces of soft fruits such as bananas, cantaloupe, strawberries, pineapple, unseeded watermelon, honeydew or any other favorite fruit. Give your child a straw and have him or her put the fruit on the straw. Make a pattern by colors, type or most favorite. Serve with your child’s favorite flavor yogurt as a dip.
  • Vegetable Kabob: Do the above with bite-size vegetable pieces such as green peppers, red peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, lettuce or any other favorites. You can mix dry ranch dressing into Greek yogurt for a healthier dip.
  • Cereal or Fruit Necklace: Provide your child a plate of O-shaped cereal, bite-size pieces of soft fruit, or a mixture of both. Have your child string his/her choices by color, flavor or type on a new clean long shoelace (you can wash and dry a new shoelace ahead of time). Make sure the necklace is loose around your child’s neck and that he/she is sitting when eating.

These activities will help build your child’s fine-motor skills by using his/her fingers to move in ways that build the hand muscles needed for handwriting.

Eye/hand coordination is strengthened in these activities, as both have to work as a team to accomplish a task.

Creating a pattern of items by colors, types of fruits or shapes help math and literacy skills.

And your child will learn, patience, concentration and sitting skills — even if only for a FEW minutes!