For the last couple of weeks we have been exploring different activities on our Tuff Tray by using different surfaces on it. The preschoolers were provided with sparkling white play dough and some loose parts to have fun creating their very own playdough snowman! As they began to explore the materials on the tuff tray, the educators watched the children’s imaginations at work. They made snowmen, snow animals, and even popsicles. “I see lots of sprinkles,” Anna commented with a big smile. “I am making a melted snowman and I put a scarf,” said Jaime. Some friends appeared to plan before they started their work. Benjamin said, “I need to make two snow balls first.” “I want to make the same snowman as Merline, but I want to add a mouth too,” added Leo. He then continued to make a snow bunny. Jaxson and Luke decided to make ice cream on a stick. The children used their fine motor skills and creativity when they used their own ideas to make their creations. The activity also encouraged communication and sharing of space and materials as the children chatted with their peers about their work and the materials during this group activity.
We got our mirror surface with some glass jars, glass pearl beads, tweezers, and magnifying lenses. The preschoolers used their fine motor skills, as well as hand-eye coordination when trying to pick up the glass pearls by using the tweezers and placing them in the glass jars. We also added some cotton balls, and the children pretended it was snow. They used the tweezers to pick up the cotton balls; it was a lot easier to pick up the cotton balls verses picking up the glass pearl with the tweezers.
We added some wooden letters, shapes, plastic leaves, rubber plant pots, coloured tweezers, and small wooden beads into the Tuff Tray. Chloe and Grayson collected all of the plastic leaves placing them in the rubber pots. Luke, Leo, and Sofia got four rubber plants placing different items in each pot. Alice was picking each individual bead with her hands and placing them in one of the red cups. Theodore, Armaan and Wesley were working on their letter recognition by collecting all the wooden letters and saying each one. Emily loved the feeling of the beads on her hands and would place all the beads on top of them.
We set up another fun Tuff Tray for the children to explore. We brought back the arctic animals they loved so much, added in some cotton balls, tiny snowflakes, and glass beads. We put the mirror base down underneath to look like the icy arctic tundra. The children found many fun ways to explore the materials and showed a lot of creativity. Leo slid the arctic fox across the mirror and said “skate, skate, skate.” When Leo discovered the small igloo, he tried to get the animals to fit inside but they were all too big; he realized that the beads and cotton balls fit underneath it though, displaying great problem solving. Anna had fun putting a lot of snowflakes into the igloo, she told an educator she had “a whole pile.” Alice held up one of the snowflakes and said “look, a snowflake.” An educator asked Alice if the snowflake was going to melt inside and she said “no it’s made of paper.” As Vijay was exploring the materials he found a small star and showed it to an educator and said “that is a little star.” Rumi discovered that some of the glass beads had glitter inside of them and she said “look at these sparkly ones.”
The provision of different tools, objects and materials in a tuff tray encourages children to strengthen their fine motor skills; using their hands to move items, pick things up, squeeze objects, and handle utensils. Tuff Trays in particular encourage group play, allowing numerous children at once to join the activity, playing alongside each other or together. This creates a great opportunity to build on social skills, confidence, and speech and language development.
We wonder what other cool activities could we do on the tuff tray!
