Teaching Preschoolers to Button Their Shirt
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How to teach a child to button a shirt? Here are a few smart and effective activities that’ll improve his fine motor skills too. So, follow these tips to help your 3-year-old develop his buttoning and unbuttoning abilities with flair.
It’s indeed a big milestone for preschoolers when they learn how to button their own shirt. They feel grown up and important. Usually, by the age of 4, children get the hang of buttoning and unbuttoning their shirts, skirts, trousers, shorts or other pieces of clothing. However, if it’s taking a little longer than expected for your child, here are some interesting ways in which you can help them develop this much-needed buttoning skill.
Interesting Ways to Teach Kids How to Button
1. Holding a Button over the Piggy Bank Slot
It all starts with holding the button correctly. Begin by getting your little one acquainted with buttons. Show him how to hold one correctly, using his thumb, forefinger and middle finger. How about teaching your 3-year-old how to slide colorful buttons through the slit of a piggy bank? This way, he will get a better grip on small and large buttons alike. Also, with improved finger motor skills, he will be sliding the buttons in efficiently and quickly.
2. Make it Easy with Large buttons
At first, introduce big-sized buttons to your kid. Preschoolers find it easy to manipulate bigger buttons, so keep the smaller ones away for the time being. Also, when teaching ways of buttoning, use brightly coloured buttons as they will easily attract the attention of your 3-year-old and encourage him to do better. It’s a good idea to give children stiffer shirts or jackets to button up in their early learning stages.
3. Unbutton First
Grab some neatly buttoned shirts belonging to you, your hubby, or your little one. Teach your child the right way of unbuttoning first. Unbuttoning is easier for preschoolers to master. Once he knows how to hold the button and push it out of the hole, he will learn buttoning up faster.
4. Small Little Steps to Buttoning Up
Preschoolers learn best with visual demonstration. Break up each step of buttoning and show your toddler how to find the button first, push it through the hole and then straighten it the right way. To help him find his way through, lay a shirt on a table or on the floor before getting onto the task.
5. Go Bottom Up
When kids start with the bottom most button, they get a better view of the button that they are supposed to work upon. They can also set to see the button hole clearly and there’s more room for them to move their little fingers around. So, by working his way up from the bottom most your child will find it easy to button the rest.
Buttoning up a shirt at age 3 isn’t that easy. So, remember to appreciate your little one whenever he puts a button through the right holes successfully.
