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Activities to Develop Fine Motor (Hand) Skills
Children learn through play; therefore, one of the best ways to promote your child’s development is with activities that he/she enjoys doing. Learning can be more fun by engaging your child in games and craft activities.
Below are some suggestions of activities that you can do at home with your child to promote his/her fine motor skills (coloring, cutting, and writing) that are an integral part of school. When completing fine motor activities, encourage your child to use his/her “pincher fingers” (thumb to index finger). If completing writing tasks, encourage your child to be mindful of the lines, the size of his/her letters, and spacing between the words.
Gross Motor (Large Muscle) Activities:
- Participate in sports such as soccer, baseball, basketball
- Encoureage outdoor play on playground equipment - climbing, jumping, running
- Encourage hopping on one foot, skipping, galloping
- Encourage games that incorporate left and right such as Simon Says, Twister, dancing to Hokey Pokey
- Dance with videos from GoNoodle (website)
Fine Motor (Small Muscle) Activities:
- Crafts that use paper, scissors, glue, hole puncher, crayons, and markers
- Activities such as lacing cards, stringing beads, Bead Buddies (key chains), putting coins in a bank, jigsaw puzzles
- Games that encourage mature grasp patterns such as Don’t Spill the Beans, Kerplunk, Connect Four, Hi Ho CherryO, Cootie, Lite Brite, Trouble
- Prewriting activities using Magna Doodle, activity books (mazes, dot-to-dots, hidden pictures)
- Practice forming lines (vertical, horizontal, diagonal) and shapes (circle, square, triangle) using paint, chalk (smaller pieces encourage a better pencil grasp), dry erase board, shaving cream
- Practice forming shapes, letters, and numbers using Play-Doh, pipe cleaners, yarn pieces
- Practice writing name using capital and lowercase letters as appropriate
- Encourage fasteners such as snaps, buttons, zippers, tying shoes
Perceptual Motor Activities:
- Assemble Legos using booklets or models as a guide
- Do wordsearches and crossword puzzles
- Put together puzzles using strategies to match colors, look for incomplete/missing objects, and look for edge pieces