This is a Montessori Practical Life lesson on a preschool use of a golf tee, which is an awesome gross motor exercise. Additionally, I will also show you a couple of fun extensions where your child will also exercise fine motor control.
What you will need:
- a tray,
- a little hammer or a little rubber mallet,
- golf tees,
- a box filled with non-drying modeling clay: rip the clay apart and mush it in, filling the entire space of the box; offer your child to do this since working with clay is a great hand-muscle control exercise.
Advise your child to hold the golf tee with two fingers and hammer three times before letting go of the hand.
Then finish hammering until the tee is deep into the clay.
This activity is super fun! To pull the tees out of the molding clay, offer your child to wiggle the tee and work it out by exercising those arm muscles since it might be challenging. Finally, a child would mash the clay all back into the box, making the top smooth, ready for the next use.
A child can do this activity as many times s/he wants, so have it available on the shelf. Just make sure that this work goes back on its place after the child is finished with it.
Well, since you rummaged through your golf bag to find your tees, I will give you a few extensions you might like:
Use a styrofoam block
Use recycled packing blocks
Offer your child to hammer on wood. See our Earth Day Unit Study here
Also, use a larger foam block or two blocks glued together and offer your child to make shapes: a circle, square, rectangle, triangle – by hammering the tees. You may need to draw shapes onto the block as guides.
Other Extensions: Golf Tee Poking (instead of Pin Poking): for youngest children who are just starting to work on their pencil grip or if you have a little one and you don’t want to have a pin laying on a shelf.
You would trace a letter with a marker on a hard cardstock first, and present the activity on a tray, the paper layered over a sponge or a mesh rug.
Poking with a tee offers a little bit more control. See here our 🔠 Letter Series (Montessori Language).
Offer your child to push down on the lines. Once finished, offer to hold the paper up to the window and have the light go through. More on Letter V here.
Another Extension: use a styrofoam block for holding tees and balance small balls, marbles, ping pong balls, Easter eggs, Halloween balls, etc.
See here a 🎥video post 🇺🇸4th of July Inspired ⛳ Golf Tees 🔨Hammering and Ball Balancing DIY Activity (Practical Life 🙌 101 🎥 Series).
See here 🎃Halloween Inspired ⛳️Golf Tee 🔨Hammering • Ball Balancing • 🙌🏻 Practical Life Activity.
This golf tee hammering is a mixture of gross motor and an intro to fine motor activities before your child has acquired a more precise fine motor skill required for beading, collaging and Montessori frames. Before you introduce this tee-hammering, you would start your Practical Life curriculum with:
- DRY pouring ~ read here DRY Spout Pouring 1:1, and here DRY Pouring 1:2;
- Also, see here 🍁Fall 👻Halloween Inspired Tongs Transferring (Montessori 🙌🏻 Practical Life).
- then introduce WATER pouring ~see here 💦WET Spout Pouring 1:1, and here 💦WET Pouring 1: 2;
- moving on to food preparation, scrubbing and cleaning, water play activities like bubble making, nesting boxes and so on.
I hope you found fun reasons to use your golf tees and enjoyed our PRACTICAL LIFE lesson.
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