When we talk about fine motor skills, we are looking at several components including the following:
Listed below are a few activities that address all these areas to give you some ideas and a starting place for working on these important skills at home. Let's get back to the basics!
- Bilateral Coordination (using both hands together)
- Manual Dexterity (moving the fingers in a smooth and coordinated way)
- Midline Crossing (spontaneously moving body parts – in this case hands- to the other side of the body to work. From right to left and vice versa if we are speaking in terms of an imaginary line being drawn down the center of the body from head to toes)
- Hand Strength (fingers and hands must be strong enough to get the work done and not get tired out too quickly)
Listed below are a few activities that address all these areas to give you some ideas and a starting place for working on these important skills at home. Let's get back to the basics!
- Make cookies! (WASH WASH WASH those hands!) Mixing ingredients, rolling dough with a rolling pin, pressing cookie cutters, or even making balls with just their hands addresses all components of fine motor coordination. *Bonus – allow child to ice cookies or squeeze decorative icing from a tube, finish off with sprinkles – use fingers to sprinkle them versus shaking the canister
- Make pretend cookies!! – Act out the steps of cookie making with play dough for nearly the same fine motor benefits.
- Paper airplanes, or origami if you’re fancy 😉 (origami step tutorials can be found in a simple google search as can airplane ideas)
- Screw open and closed tops for containers such as water bottles, gatorade (regular or mini sized) bottles and jars (be careful if they’re glass)
- Spray water bottles or water guns at each other for outdoor fun
- Use water bottles to spray plants (even plants you don’t care much about are good for this activity)
- Put coins into a bank (or small items such as dry beans or corn kernels into a container with a small hole cut into the top – think plastic tops like coffee cans)
- Use tongs to pick up small items – can be done at a table top or at floor level (or even outside)
- Pop bubble wrap bubbles
- String beads or cereal (cheerios, fruit loops etc) to make necklaces/bracelets. (To make the task a little easier for small hands, try pipe cleaners and larger beads)
- Tear paper into pieces or strips to paste into shapes drawn for textured artwork (shapes can be drawn by child or adult)
- Trace hands to make artwork
- Build with blocks
- Puzzles! (lots of options here including homemade – look online for tutorials)
- Board games
- Card games (physically handling the cards even just to pull from a deck or place one out from a hand works on fine motor coordination)
- Color – anything from blank paper to coloring books or sheets (bonus for doing so on the floor laying on bellies to work that core and shoulder girdle)