Build Fine Motor Skills - Early Childhood Coloring Activity

Early childhood, start from 1 to 3 years old is called as the golden age which their cognitive, emotion, and social development improve in the fastest and greatest ways. In this period, the kids must be taught a lot of things in order to build their skills up especially for the motor skills. Motor skills are the ways of the body to improve the performance to be more complex, and it will continue for the entire life. The motor skills is divided into two classifications, there are Gross motor skills and fine motor skills.

Gross motor skills are the skills that require the large muscles movements, involve the entire body to engage the physical activities such as running, swimming, kicking, etc. Fine motor skills are those which require the small muscles, the coordination between the body muscles and the eyes. It can be trained in many ways such as moving an object, doodling, set the blocks, writing, etc. And with the combination of both skills, the children developments will be increase maximally. 

One of the fun ways to stimulate the fine motor skills is coloring activity.

Who doesn’t like coloring? Children really love this activity, they can set their imaginations free through the colors. They will be trained to distinguish colors, mix them together and create the new one. And soon or later, these abilities will help them to make many art creations along to their developmental age.

Now i will give an example of the coloring activity. Here i got my own nephew as the ‘experimental’ object. His name is Rafa, and he is 19 months old. He is a very active toddler and has a lot of energy. And whenever the energy burst, he will be doing many naughty activities which somehow will disturb us in some ways. That’s why as the adults we must know how to control it and channel the energy to the worthwhile activity.

Being Friendly Towards The Students - Yay or Nay? (Part 1)

I’ve been working in a private school for about 6 months, by the name itself we actually know how the school programs work. Private school means we got less government’s hands on us and run the school with our own creations based on well known and trusted programs.

It does mean we should take the examples from the developed countries that already got many great ways in teaching the kids. But not just the way in teaching, the way their teachers behave is something we shouldn’t miss.

Teacher, somebody who give almost all of their time and mind on the students just to make sure they will get enough help in making their future life

That’s how teachers in many developed countries work, they fall down deep into the student’s problems and sometimes unknowingly they’ve gone too far and get their life distracted, sacrifice their own life to save their beloved students. 

We can take the example from Jodi Schmidt, a teacher from Oakfield Elementary who saved her sick student named Natasha. Tasha had been missing the school over trips to the hospital for dialysis. Jodi couldn’t just sit and watch Tasya’s problem. She came up with a plan and decided to act. Eventually, she successfully made Tasya coming back to the school by donoring her own organ. Jodi gave us the truly meaning of helping a student. She’s willing to know what really happened to the student. She is one over millions in the world, hardly to find a great teacher like her nowadays because following her step is almost impossible.

 Jodi and Tasha

Then how to be at least a ‘mini’ Jodi who helped the student wholeheartedly? The basic thing is be their friend first, we must observe them, understand what they like, what they hate, and what kind of problems they’re facing off, and of course try our best to help them out.

But the next question is have we found those characteristics here on our teachers in Indonesia? Do they ever have that thought in their mind? Some might be do, but most of them don’t.