8 Activities For Improving Fine Motor Skills

For three years now, I’ve not posted on things that I assume everyone else would assume to be boring.

Then a few days ago I was speaking to a mother about fine motor skills and how her daughter’s were under developed. We spoke for a while about what fine motor skills were and what you can do to encourage their development.

We do loads of little activities specifically aimed at fine motor skill development, while having fun, so I thought I’d share a few from the last 12 or so months with you.

If you don’t know what fine motor skills are, they are the small movements that occur in the hands, wrists, fingers, feet, toes, lips and tongue. They are the smaller actions that occur such as picking up objects between the thumb and finger, using a pencil to write carefully, holding a fork and using it to eat, and other small muscle tasks that we all do every day.

Activities that use, promote and enhance them involve picking, up, putting in and pouring.

Here are a few:

Ice cream sticks in a narrow bottle neck. My 14 month old loves this one.

Picking up small objects, like stones. Arrange from large to small or dark to light. (Keep an eye on smaller children so they don’t swallow them. )

Pour pompoms from cup to cup.

Pick them up and sort them by colour or size.

Stickers are perfect for fine motor skills. Picking the sticky backing from the foam bit.

Coloured rice. It’s all fun, but the clean up is where the pincer grip really comes into its own.

Threading is great. It requires concentration, and has the reward of ‘jewelery’ at the end.

Stacking. That’s great fun, especially in the knocking over. But again, balance, concentration – excellent development. 

What do you for fine motor skill development?