Did you know that fine motor skills need to be developed just like other early developmental skills like recognizing colors and letters? Fine motor skills is a synonym to dexterity which is the coordination of small muscles in movements mostly involving the hands and fingers. Fine motor skills can be developed in a variety of ways if you have a toddler or young child there are a lot of fun, engaging activities you can introduce to them.
One great way to get your toddler or preschooler more adept in the area of fine motor skills is the pasta drainer activity. Place a pasta drainer and some pipe cleaners down in front of them. Show them how they can push and pull the pipe cleaner through the small holes of the pasta drainer. They will love it and be busy for a long while. ( Maybe you can fit in that phone call or organize the pantry. ) This simple skill will develop their fine motor skills and practicing this often will build up those muscles. It’s also perfect for eye hand coordination as well. These types of activities can better prepare your child for holding a pencil in their later years in preschool or kindergarten.
Using their little hands to string beads through pipe cleaner is always a great idea as well.
If you teacher K -4th you can also incorporate pin art. Pin art is wonderful for several reasons! For one, it definitely helps build their fine motor skills! In order to use pin art if you aren’t familiar with the idea your child or student is asked to hold a push pin in their hand while pressing into a soft area like carpet. They push through the paper and lift their pin, then the go to the next dot on the paper and repeat. It’s a fun, engaging activity and a quiet classroom activity if you’ve been cooped up inside from indoor recess it’s a great way to keep your sanity.
As you can see introducing young children to these fine motor skills will help make them more successful as they enter their formal education. Also, it’s important to keep their fine motor skills strong and pin art is a wonderful way to do that. If you are interested in more pin art resources you can find them
here.
What other ideas have your tried to help build your young child’s fine motor skills?
