Hands

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By Hilary White – educational and craft writer

From hand-inspired art to different ways of using our hands, there is plenty to explore with a ‘hands’ theme. Try the following activities with your children and help them discover just how fascinating their hands can be.

A ‘kind hands’ tree

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Talk about different ways of using our hands and help the children to differentiate between kind and unkind acts. For example, using our hands to stroke a cat is kind whereas using our hands to pull its tail is unkind. Encourage the children to come up with their own suggestions, linking the discussion to recent experiences.

Draw round the children’s hands and cut them out or cut out painty hand prints. Check which kind act each child would like to stick onto their hand shape, scribe their words on labels, stick them onto the hands and attach the hands to the tree. Stick twigs in a pot of plasticene, punch holes through the hands and tie them onto the twigs; alternatively, paint or collage a big tree with the children and glue on the hands.

Hand words

Communication and Language

Encourage the children to study their hands. How many different parts can they name? Help them to discover that their nails feel different from their fingers and that each finger is a different length. Can older children feel the bones underneath their skin? Give them magnifying glasses and help them to look at wrinkles, lines, finger print patterns, pores, moles, scratches and any other details they can spot. Highlight finger print patterns by making your own finger prints.