Just Bead It

Hi All,
We have a great resource available to us through a local program called Connections. They provide critical child developmental information to parents of children up to five years old. They distribute "Ages and Stages Questionnaires" every three months or so. Each is usually about four pages long and details certain skills that are appropriate for each age set, categorized by communication, fine motor, gross motor, problem solving, and personal-social. It's really a great tool for me to obtain a better understanding of the skills I should watch for and work on with the kids.
We are in the process of completing our 27 month questionnaire. One of the fine motor questions pertained to whether your child could string small items onto a string or shoelace. I had bought a lacing bead kit (Melissa and Doug, one of our favorite brands!) some time ago, but the age range indicated three - six years, so I stored it away. Well, I pulled it out to see what Drew and Bree thought of it.

Drew picked up a shoelace and immediately got the hang of it. He was unstoppable!

As for Bree, she quickly got frustrated and went back to stacking legos.

We waited a day and got the beads and strings out again.  And again, Drew was the Master of the Beads.

Bree could get the string into the hole of the beads, but struggled with pulling the string through the other end. I know she'll get it with a bit more practice. In the meantime, Bree still enjoys her puzzles. We have about ten 24 piece puzzles (age range also 3+) that she likes to rotate . She is really good at putting them together, many of them entirely unaided. In fact, I pulled this one out for her and let her work on it alone. Just a few minutes later, I returned to find this...

Proud Puzzle Wiz!

So, I'm really not at all worried about either of their fine motor skills. Incidentally, they are also very good at making strawberries disappear!