Fine Motor Activities for Kids and Preschoolers: What Are Types of Motor Development?

Motor skills involve how smartly kids can use their hands. There are many kinds of motor skills activities which can be used for kids. Fine motor abilities are required for many of a kid’s daily activities, such as dressing, opening a backpack, and using a pen.

As an infant, they start with holding a rattle and the scraping finger grasp, then progress to more complex abilities like utilising scissors, controlling a computer mouse, and even playing an instrument. Learn why these abilities are important and how you can help your child develop them.

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Fine Motor Activities for Preschoolers

Have you ever tried feeding your child with one finger? And he needs to pick the rest of the food with his fingers. You know picking and holding food is the first stage of holding a crayon.

#1. Playdough Activity

Kids can mold the play dough any way they want. They can also stick various objects into it. These objects are wooden letters, pebbles, and candles. This activity shows their creativity of what they can do with play dough. They can also stick googly eyes, buttons, and coloured pasta. They can create a jungle out of playdough this way.

#2. Fingerprinting with Edible Clay

Kids can also be asked to leave fingerprints with their hands using edible colour. You can prepare this colour at home through a simple recipe involving corn flour, boiling water, cold water, and liquid food colour. Since kids have a habit to lick, these fingerprints should be edible.

You can also mix chocolate pudding mix with another pudding mix and create edible food paint of another kind. These fingerprints and paints created on paper take some time to dry up.

#3. Write on Fairy Dust

You can also use fairy dust and write on it. You can leave behind fingerprints or create letters on it. To create fairy dust (you can also get it from the market), you also need to mix table salt with liquid food colour.

The children can be taught the alphabet this way. They are supposed to write letters of their name onto this fairy dust. You can also teach numbers to your kids by drawing them out on this fairy dust.

It’s important to develop motor skills in children so that they can develop hand-eye coordination.

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Fine Motor Activities for Toddlers

#1. Putting Rice into One Container from Another

Once you want to teach your toddler to move rice from one container to another, you need scoops and different containers.

#2. Race Patterns with Buttons

You can also make sure that the kids place buttons on different patterns drawn on paper. This is a fun activity for kids. Kids enjoy placing the coloured buttons on the pattern. You can draw patterns like zig-zag and swirls on paper. You will need a marker pen to draw patterns on coloured cardboard paper.

Kids love colours, so make sure that you use various colour buttons for this activity. You can also put glue drops on a piece of paper. Your child can stick buttons against these glue drops. Instead of buttons, you can also use pebbles or pom-poms. Any object of equal size will be apt for this task.

#3. Putting Plastic Straws into Cardboard Tubes

You should cut the cardboard tubes into 10-15 cm long pieces. Then ask your kids to put plastic straws into these holes. It’s a good activity for strengthening the power of the hands of your kid. This activity makes sure that your kids have strong hands while writing.

#4. Scarves into a Ball with Holes

You can put scarves into the holes of a ball from one end and draw them out from another. Different coloured scarves can be used for this activity creating the illusion of a rainbow.

By the way, this kind of ball with holes is known as an Oball. Instead of putting scarves through holes, kids can also pull out the scarves from the Oball.

#5. Put the Tail on the Bunny

It is the most popular activity in which your kids learn how to stick a tail to a bunny. You can use pom poms as bunny tails. Then you can put Velcro on the bunny cutouts. Once that’s done, you can stick the pompom tails to bunnies.

Although Velcro is self-adhesive, you can also use a glue gun on Velcro, while sticking tails to bunnies.

This activity can also be done without using Velcro. Ask your kids to match the pompoms with the correct bunny using the colour. They can place the same coloured pom pom on the bunny’s tail. In this activity, you can shoot a drop of adhesive or two, from the glue gun on the Velcro.

#6. Take Off the Tape from the Table

You can paste some coloured electrical tape on the table. Then ask kids to peel it off. This can be a fun activity for them when they remove the tape layer by layer. They have to figure out which tape is on top of which tape.

#7. Bead Balloons

For this activity, you need to put water beads in a bottle and add water to it. After that’s done, the water beads expand in size overnight. The next day, you push the water beads into a balloon through the bottle. Your son can have a fun time squeezing the water beads in the balloons.

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What are Fine Motor Skills?

Fine motor skills can be taught at home and in schools. Stacking blocks are used in pre-nursery schools to strengthen motor skills.

They are very important to do many study-related things like circle an option in an exam. For kids, motor skills are needed to do so many activities which are:

# Taking crayons in their hands and being able to draw with them.

# Being able to draw pictures

# Being able to use scissors.

# Having good handwriting Kids need these skills so that they can carry on with simple tasks like brushing their teeth every day.

Fine Motor Development

Little hands need strength in muscles. They must have dexterity also. That’s why children must be introduced to various activities involving games for such skill development. Through this, a child can control the movement of his hands, thumbs, and fingers.

When he has such fine motor development, he can do a lot of tasks that involve unbuttoning, zipping, unzipping, eating, and writing. The kindergarten has lesson plans for students where they are made to perform various activities to improve fine motor skills. You can also encourage kids to do small tasks in the kitchen to build the dexterity of hands.

List of Fine Motor Activities to Improve Such Skills

#1. Using Tweezers

You can use them to hold an item and put that in another place. The kids can use tweezers to drop goldfish into a water bowl. It’s also important to check that the number of goldfish in the bowl is the same as the number mentioned on it.

So, this activity includes some counting for the kids also. As far as preparation is concerned, it’s better that you have a sheet of fishbowl printed so that kids can place goldfish on it.

#2. Using Pipe Cleaners and a Colander

You can poke pipe cleaners into the holes of a colander. He has to put them in a hole of a colander and take them out from the other side. It is a fun-filled activity.

You can ask your child to choose a pipe cleaner of a specific colour. This way, the child can increase his knowledge of colours also. It is one of the small muscle activities for children.

There are stages of fine motor development for kids as follows:

Zero-six months – When a child tries to grab something

Six-Twelve months old – Tries to grab objects to transfer them to the mouth

One-Two years old – Tries to create towers of three small building blocks.

Other Examples of Fine Motor Skills Activities

#1. Clothespins

This is an easy activity for kids. It also does not require much preparation on your end. You must have some cards printed with names of objects on them. You can also laminate the cards so that your little one does not destroy them.

Then you can write letters on clothespins and ask your ward to place them to complete the spelling of the names of the objects. This is how this task will boost their motor skills and sharpen their knowledge of the alphabet also. You can mix up the clothespins with different letters written on them and ask the child to find the correct letter clothespins from the lot.

All of these activities are indoor activities.

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#2. Paper Clips

You can also show kids how to attach paper clips to make chains. This involves good use of fingers. Then they can use these paper clip chains as necklaces or bracelets.

#3. Zipper Board

A zipper board containing zippers is a good idea to develop fine motor skills in kids. All you have to do is glue the zippers to a cardboard box using a glue gun.

However, make sure that you don’t glue the middle part of the zipper because then it won’t open. Children can zip and unzip these zippers until their fingers get tired. This zipper board is a perfect accessory for long trips when kids get bored and start annoying you.

#4. Cork Games

If you have too many corks lying idle in your house, you can use them to make a motor skills game for your kids. This involves cutting the flap of a plastic container with scissors to make holes and then pushing the cork into it through the hole.

So these are the various ways in which you can improve the fine motor skills of your child. These skills have to be developed because they are essential to the daily life of a kid for chores such as eating, zipping, buttoning, and writing.

Having Issues With Fine Motor Skills

There are certain warning indicators that your kid may have fine motor skills challenges, such as dropping objects frequently, having difficulty gripping a spoon, and having difficulty writing or using cutters. Even your child’s failure to tie their shoes as they get older could suggest a problem. If you feel your child is having problems with fine motor skill development, you should get him or her evaluated by a doctor.

Convey your issues with your kid’s teacher if your child has been diagnosed with fine motor deficiencies that may hinder their schooling.

Conclusion

Fine motor abilities are crucial for a child’s growth in terms of living and learning. Children can overcome numerous problems and attain milestones by including motor skills activities, everyday house activities, and participation in appropriate skill-development workshops. Visit The Real School Of Montessori right now by clicking here!

Also Read: What is Robotics for Kids? Introduction of Electronics Lessons for Kids

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