A hand to lend

I remember vaguely my playschool days or my primary school days.

We always had a day in a week where we were asked to come in colourful dresses and one of the lectures was cooking or playing with dough or making round puris.
We used to love that day of the week because we were made to do stuff that was out of our study schedule.We we're asked not to bring our tiffin box col it school and have that food for lunch.

I never had thought why was this play and learn were included in our weekly schedule during my school days.
So the question arises how did we help to cook and how did these activities were meant to improve our fine motor skills-
We were given the following vegetables to peel or cut every week.
Note: These activities are supposed to be done only when an adult is supervising and is accompanied by the toddler. There might be chances of toddler swallowing or hurting themselves while doing it.
Please do these only if you can supervise.
These activities are for kids between the age of 1 year to 5 years old and also can be done by other age groups if interested.
Activities are based on children irrespective of gender so don't think if a boy or girl can do the same.

• Pealing of peas
• Pealing and sorting curry leaves
• Pealing boil potatoes
• Pealing, Cleaning spinach and sorting it a container
• Cleaning coriander
• Pealing and storing mint leaves in a container
• Playing with dough
• Making roti with chargota and belan(traditional roller and a base used to make Rotis or pancakes).

Playing with dough increases your hand muscles which are necessary for hand grip, writing skills, and many more hands and fingers activities.
Cleaning and pealing of these vegetables are done using these three fingers which are used for writing so which improves the writing muscles.
These above activities benefit the toddler in many ways -

• Keeps them occupied
• Reduces screen time
• Help with daily chores
• ✋ Hand-eye 👀 coordination
• Makes them sit in one place for some time(as they always need to roam or run around)
• Improves fine motor skills

These activities were done by me in my childhood, they are tried and tested by my teachers all thanks to them.
So, all the mother's out there who are worried their kid doesn't sit in place and study, eat or write. Please first improve the fine motor skills, things will slowly and gradually change.
I introduced these activities to my toddler as a game. I started as let's play a game and help mom while we just count, who peals the potatoes first or who peals the peas first.
These small talks won't always work or they won't always listen to you. 

They always need something new to play with. Keeping the activities similar, just bring some twists in those activities.
New ideas will make them sit in one place and help you a little quiet time to complete your chores.
Few ideas to help them do these activities.

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