Creative Fine Motor Activities

We have already had families share with us how they are incorporating fine motor play at home! Many children love to cut - not following the lines or necessarily cutting something for a project, but just to play with and experience scissors. We encourage this! Give them newspaper, old magazines or junk mail and let them play. A word of caution - this is the most common age to cut their own hair! Knowing this ahead of time and reminding them what they can use scissors for might help avoid this, but no guarantee....

Making Play-dough can be fun too. Key ingredient is typically "cream of tartar." You can find it in the spices aisle at the grocery store.

Check out some of Ms. Kat's additional ideas for preschool fine motor play...

10+1 Fine Motor Activities Fine Motor activities are important for your child’s development. It is your fine motor muscles that help you write, draw, cut with scissors, and put on your clothes. Here are some activities you can do to help increase your child’s fine motor movements. 1. Play dough: play dough is great to get children’s fingers moving. You can use play dough scissors or play dough utensils to help your child practice even more fine motor skills. Another way to help increase your child’s fine motor skills with play dough is to have your child try to make balls or snakes out of the play dough. It is also great for encouraging imaginative play. 2. Beads: stringing beads onto a thread is a very difficult task and helps children increase their fine motor. If you have a younger child, I recommend starting with bigger beads and thread. If you don’t have beads you can use cereal like cheerios or fruit loops to have your child make their bracelet or necklace. 3. Chalk: big chalk is great for fine motor movements because your child does not have to grip the chalk as tightly as small crayons or pencils. It also is a way to get outside and enjoy fresh air. 4. Drawing: not only helps with fine motor but also creativity. Teachers love seeing children draw at school and many times students then dictate to us what they drew. That not only helps with fine motor and creativity but also communication skills as well. If your child is advanced in his/her fine motor movements (able to hold the crayon correctly) you could try to have your child trace numbers or letters that you drew first. 5. Cutting out Magazines: this is another activity children love at school. Students love to pick out a picture in a magazine and cut it out all by themselves. If you don’t have magazines just give your child a piece of paper. Our students even have a rhyme to help remember how to hold scissors: 2 fingers at the bottom and a thumb at the top. Open the mouth and go chop, chop, chop. Caution: be ready for lots of little pieces of paper to clean up. If you want to take the fine motor development a bit further you could have your child glue the pictures to another piece of paper. 6. Paint: painting, like drawing, helps with gripping. However, painting uses different arm movements than drawing sometimes. You can paint with paintbrushes, sponges, toothbrushes, etc. 7. Counting objects: this helps with fine motor, because the child is pointing or gripping objects, and math as well. Have your child point to each object, or even grip and move each object, as he/she counts. If you want to add in some literacy you could have your child point to letters or grip them to move them. This could even be a sorting activity. 8. Building: students love to build at school. They will build with just about anything they can get their hands on: Legos, blocks, connectors, gears, toilet paper rolls, and even other toys. 9. Puzzles: puzzles not only help children with fine motor, but also with cognitive development and patience as well. As children do puzzles, they are also recognizing shapes. If you do not have puzzles at home you can cut up a magazine page or another picture for your child to use as a puzzle. 10. Pinching pom poms: at school, we have child tweezers that students can use to pinch pom poms with. Students enjoy pinching the pom poms and putting them in different containers. If you don’t have tweezers your child can just pinch the pom poms with his/her fingers. This is also a great sorting/counting activity. 11. Dress up: dressing up is a simple way to get your child to use fine motor and imagination. If you don’t have dress up clothing you can just use your child’s own clothes or your clothing. We hope these fine motor activities help your child’s movement development and help bring you and your child closer together!