Fine Motor Task Cards for Kids

I don’t know why Pinterest just suddenly decided I needed to see all the content about task cards and task boxes for kids, but these ideas are great for the classroom to keep in centers or have on hand for early finishers. You can also use them at home as quiet bags or boxes for kids to use when younger siblings might be sleeping, or in the car for a non-screen activity.

Let’s take a look at some fine motor skill task cards and how you can use them to teach kids skills while they play.

Pre-K Pages has a nice set of playdough task cards you can use in boxes or bags with a little tray (or they can just work on the table if they are sitting at a table). Working with clay or play dough is a great fine motor skill exercise, or you can add these to your playdough center if you have one to give them a little bit of direction while they work.

Teaching Mama has a bunch of great ideas for fine motor task boxes, from practicing working a glue bottle to threading beads, using clothespins or scissors, dropping water, finger painting and more. There’s a free printable that shows all the task options she talks through in the post if you want to make your own little boxes, or just keep these ideas on hand when you’re ready to add some fine motor fun to your days.

One of the ideas she mentions in that post is working with a hole punch, and Early Learning Ideas has a whole bunch (the urge to write “hole bunch” is strong) of ideas for printables that help kids practice hole punching, whether it’s a strip with circles on it for them to punch or pictures that include circles for punching, these ideas make it a little more fun to practice this important skill.

My Happy Place Teaching has a whole post about using fine motor task boxes in kindergarten, and her paid resource includes more than 100 task ideas with printables. But if you don’t need 100 boxes you can still get some good ideas from this post about different tasks to include and why and when you can use them. She also mentions using them in the morning while you’re busy with kids coming in at different times, which is a great idea.

Greenland is technically an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark rather than its own country, but it’s also the world’s largest island, so that seems worth celebrating. Let’s take a closer look at Greenland!

Greenland Basics

Greenland sits between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, and its Hans Island has a .75 mile or 1.2 km long land connection to Canada. It has an area of 836,330 square miles, or 2,166,086 square kilometers, with a population less than 57,000.

The capital and largest city is Nuk, where more than 20,000 people live.

Citizens of Greenland and citizens of Denmark, and thus part of the European Union. There are two representatives from Greenland in the parliament of Denmark. Greenland also has its own premier and legislature, and is considered a self-governing entity within the constitutional monarchy of Denmark (the king has a mostly ceremonial role).

Most people in Greenland are Greenlandic Innuit, and the official language is Greenlandic, though Danish and English are also recognized.

The first Paleo-Innuits settled in Greenland around 2500 BCE, while the Norse arrived in 986. Greenland had a union with Norway in the 1200s and it unified with Denmark in 1814. Home rule was established in 1979 and the island became more independent in 2009.

The Norse named it Greenland for marketing purposes; in Greenlandic its called Kalaallit Nunaat, or land of the Kalaallit, being the name of the indigenous people who live on the western part of the island.

Kaffeklubben Island is considered the northernmost permanent land on Earth.

Greenland’s economy is dependent on fishing and one third of public revenue comes in the form of financial aid from Denmark.

Eighty percent of Greenland’s electricity is produced by hydropower. There are few roads between towns because of the fjords that would require ferries to connect them.

Greenland National Symbols

The flag of Greenland is made up of two horizontal bands of color, one white and one red, with a circle that’s left of center and in which the colors are opposite from the stripe they sit in. The flag was adopted in 1985.

It’s not a country but it does have an anthem, known in Greenlandic as “Nunarput utoqqarsuanngoravit” and in English as “Our Ancient Land.” It was written in 1912 and adopted in 1916. It was originally set to the melody of the Swedish national anthem, but the music was updated in 1937.

The coat of arms is a blue shield with a polar bear standing on two legs and facing the left, with its tongue sticking out. It has been part of the coat of arms of Denmark since 1666 and still exists in the coat of arms of the Danish royal family. The current version of the coat of arms was designed and adopted in 1989.

Because its not its own country it doesn’t really have national symbols, but you could argue the polar bear is one, even without it being on the coat of arms.

Greenland Activities for Kids

See more of what it’s like in Greenland with this video from Counting Countries (warning someone throws up in the video because she swallowed a bug; if you want to skip the first 30 seconds or so and then again at minute 16 you should be good) or check out Nuuk in this video from Travel Obscurer.

The Awkward Traveler has a great post answering questions about Greenland by native Greenlanders. Learn about what they call themselves, the major regions of the country, what it’s like to grow up there and how people travel in the country.

Learn more about Greenland for kids with this post and video from Let’s Go Geography.

Print a maze using the shape of Greenland from Muse Printables. Learn more about why it’s called Greenland from Routes North.

Check out the popular foods of Greenland at Secret Atlas. It says that Suaasat is the national dish, which is a stew made with different kinds of meat such as seal or reindeer. You can make it with beef, and there’s a recipe at Culinary Adventures with Camilla you can try.

Also check out our post about Leif Eriksson Day, and more Greenland resources at Teachers Pay Teachers.

Have you read?

Greenland Basics

Greenland National Symbols

Greenland Activities for Kids

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