Due to the items being used, it is recommended to provide supervision during fine motor activities.
If your little one is not yet using their thumb and forefinger to pick up small items, start with these --->Using Thumb and Forefinger:
Try placing small snack items, such as puffs or Cheerios, in an ice tray or small cup, causing your child to need to use their fingertips to access the items.
Use stickers! Stickers are a great way for littles to work on using their fingers. You can help by starting to peel the sticker and allowing your kiddo to finish peeling the sticker and place it on paper or a coloring book.
Place window clings on a window that is low to the ground or on the refrigerator. Your child can move the clings from place to place using their finger tips to access the clings.
Household & Practical Skills
Clothespins: Clipping doll clothes, board books, boxes, or felt shapes onto a clothesline strengthens hand muscles. You can also put clothespins on the clothing your child is wearing to mimic dressing patterns (looking at clothing that is on the body and manipulating buttons, snaps, etc).
Stickers: Peeling and placing stickers is great for precision and grip. Try providing a large piece of paper and stickers for your little one to place stickers. Later, move to a small paper or to placing stickers onto small shapes, making this activity more difficult.
Kitchen Tasks: Helping to knead dough or stir ingredients provides excellent grasping practice.
Paper, Junk Mail, or Newspaper: Ripping or crumpling paper strengthens small hand muscles.
Ice Tray Snacks: Placing small snacks such as dry cereal or fruit snacks into an ice tray encourages children to use a pincher grasp to reach the items. It can also be fun for children to move pieces from one space to another.
Sensory & Creative Play
Play Dough/Clay: Rolling, pinching, squeezing, and cutting with cookie cutters builds hand and wrist muscles.
Finger Painting/Drawing: Scribbling, coloring with crayons, or finger painting develops grip and control.
Water Play: Squeezing spray bottles or using droppers to transfer colored water strengthens hand muscles.
Colored Oats: Scooping, pouring, and transferring colored oats with spoons or scoops enhances coordination.
Placing small items or paper pieces onto glue: Provide a large paper and small items for your child to glue onto the paper. You might start by putting a dot of glue where your child wants it for them to place their item on. Later, let your child put glue dots on their paper and add items to their work of art. What a great way to work on spatial awareness.
Eye Droppers: Use eye droppers with different colors of water to color a coffee filter or paper. Squeezing the eye dropper builds finger control.
Building & Manipulating
Blocks & LEGOs: Stacking blocks or connecting large LEGOs improves hand-eye coordination and problem-solving.
Puzzles: Simple knob puzzles help develop the pincer grasp (thumb and forefinger).
Pincer Grasp Games: Picking up small items (like pom-poms or cereal) with tweezers, tongs, or even just fingers.
Sorting Small Items: Sorting helps your child learn how to spot differences between like items. It is also a great reason to pick up one small item after another to complete a task.
Placing pegs into a pegboard:
Focused Skill Builders
Bead Stringing: Threading large beads onto pipe cleaners or string.
Cereal Stringing: String cereal such as Cheerios or Fruit Loops onto uncooked spaghetti, string, or pipe cleaners.
Hole Punching: Using a hole punch on paper builds hand strength and precision.
Tracing: Tracing simple shapes helps develop a steady hand.
Piggy Bank: Placing coins into a piggy bank encourages little ones to use a pincher grasp and use problem-solving skills to get them into the small slot.
Sidewalk chalk:
Water Painting:
Bath Paints:
Popping Bubbles:
Mazes: Not only do mazes work on fine motor skills when tracing them with a finger or using a writing utensil to complete, but they also work on hand-eye coordination.
Snipping Play-Doh or paper:
Hole Puncher: Provide different colored papers and a hole punch for your child to create tiny dots of paper.
Board Games that Build Skills
Connect 4- placing the round pieces into the top to watch them drop down
Kerplunk- Pulling small sticks out slowly and carefully to prevent the board from going "kerplunk" takes practice.
Operation- Using tweezers to place and remove the tiny body parts is an advanced fine motor skill.