What are Fine Motor Skills?
The ability to perform small, precise hand movements with fluency and accuracy. It includes picking up a variety of different items with varying grips and grasps👌🫰🏻🤌🏽
Why do we need them?
It facilitates the development of mature functional hand grasps, fine hand movements, manipulation and dexterity. This enable us to complete everyday activities such as play, handwriting ✏️, cutting✂️, dressing👖, eating with cutlery 🥄etc.
Activities for Supporting Hand Dominance
Games such as Pop up pirate
Cutting and sticking
Mr. Potato head
Scooping: use one hand to scoop beans, salt, or cheerios into a container held by the other hand
Opening and closing containers: use different sized containers and fill them with different toys, stamps, or stickers, then close them up
Tip: present pencils or crayons in the top-middle section of the table so that your child needs to make a choice about which hand to use
Activities for Supporting Midline Crossing
Push a car on a track shaped like an 8. Ensure you child only uses one hand to go all the way round the track
Twister
Activities that encourage crossing the midline, e.g., touching right foot with left hand, Animal walks – crawling like a bear
Sorting games, e.g., move all the blue tokens from the left side of their body to the right side using their right hand. Then swap to the left hand and slide to the right.
Tip: the ability to cross the midline can be incorporated into everyday tasks by encouraging the child to pick up an object on the opposite side of their body
Activities for Supporting Hand Strength
Playing with tongs – try picking up pom poms or sorting dried pasta with tongs
Clothes pegs activities
Playdough activities (squishing, kneading, rolling, etc.)
Theraputty activities
Monkey bars
Water play with spray bottles, water guns, squirt toys, sponges
Activities for Supporting Pincer Grasp
Button sorting
Posting activities
Making towers with small blocks
Clothes pegs
Threading and lacing activities
Peeling and sticking stickers
Peg board activities
Turn Fine Motor Activities into Sensory Play!
Drawing lines or shapes in shaving foam with pointer finger
Finger painting
Drawing, scooping and pouring in sensory bins with rice, lentils, flour, or beans
Making sandcastles in sandpit, kinetic sand, or drawing in sand
Bubbles: pop using both hands, pop using isolated finger, e.g., pointer finger
Water play with buckets, cups and other pouring instruments, washing dishes
Playing with musical instruments, e.g., maraca or drum