Fine motor skills are essential and it’s important we set up easy and fun activities for children to practice using them. Young children need to learn to hold things, pick them up, and use them. Otherwise, it will be difficult for them to start writing, dress themselves, and more.
To accomplish that, they need to strengthen their hands and fingers, develop hand-eye coordination, and constructions skills, among other things. That’s where fine motor skills come in, and these ideas will help you get started!
Play With Playdough
Playdough activities are a great way to promote fine motor skills and help children develop them while having fun. There are many things children can do with playdough, including art, sensory play, and manipulative games. You’ll be happy to know playdough is very easy to make.
You can also provide your children with a decoration kit, including googly eyes, colored rice, buttons, pasta shapes, cookie cutters, and more, so they can create whatever they like. Monster playdough is a popular activity among children, where they can create unique monsters out of playdough.
Make Pasta Necklaces
Making necklaces with dry pasta is a classic project. It is a fine motor skills activity that promotes creativity. To make it more fun, dye the pasta shapes by putting them in Ziploc bags and adding liquid food coloring. Shake the bags well until the pasta is fully coated and let it dry for a day. When the pasta shapes are ready, you can use pipe cleaners or string to start making the necklaces. This is a nice sensory activity and children will love it!
Use Building Blocks
Construction skills can be promoted with the help of building blocks, LEGO, puzzles, and more. We recommend you encourage your children to use building blocks to create different structures. Challenge them a bit by giving them ideas or let their imagination take over and see what they come up with. Consider these lovely Mideer Wooden Building Blocks!
Finger Painting
Finger painting and painting with a brush will allow your children to develop manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination. For finger painting, you can provide them with paint of different colors and a large sheet of paper so they can use their fingers and hands to create whatever image comes to mind.
You can also give them prompts and ask them to paint something specific, like an animal they know, a house, a person, etc. Painting by numbers kits are great for painting with a brush or you can use printables and provide children with watercolors so they can bring the printables to life.
Activities that promote fine motor skills are very easy to set up and they allow your children to strengthen their hands and fingers so they can perform important tasks later on!
These are only a few ideas to get you started, but there are many others that you can try, in order to help your children work on their fine motor skills and have fun while they’re at it.