Developing fine motor skills should be an essential in every child's life.
Fine motor skills involve the small muscles of the body that enable such functions as writing, grasping small objects, cutting with scissors and fastening clothing. However working on fine motor skills has been sitting on the back burner in our home until recently. Since I am now homeschooling my toddler and preschooler I decided to give the girls plenty of opportunity to develop these skills. Here are a few of the activities that we use in our classroom.
Sorting pipe cleaners into empty spice containers.
Sorting toothpicks into empty spice containers.
Punching holes with a hole punch. (This requires a lot of strength. If your child can't do it encourage her to keep trying.)
Taping paper dots to paper. This may sounds silly but for a child it takes a lot of concentration to get the tape lined up over the dot. (Tip: For the dots, punch a bunch of holes with a hole punch. Use a variety of color to make it fun. )
Cutting paper strips with scissors. (Keep the squares for various color sorting and matching activities)
Sorting paper with clothespins.
Stacking paper squares and pinning them together with paperclips.
Squeezing balloons filled with play dough. (Great for strengthening hand muscles)
Hammer golf tees into Styrofoam.
Place washers over golf tees with tweezers.
Place beads or marbles on top of golf tees with tweezers.
String beads onto pipe cleaners.
Sort beads by color using tweezers.
Stretch rubber bands on a geoboard.
Tracing letters.
Gluing paper.
Tracing chalk shapes with paintbrush and water.
There are so many ways to
