Fine Motor Fun

Fine motor skill development is important for achieving independence with life activities. Fine motor skills require the coordination of the small muscles in the fingers, hand, and wrist along with the visual system. Fine motor skills are needed to manipulate buttons, snaps and zippers for dressing. Manipulating toys for play. Utilizing crayons, markers, and pencils for drawing and writing tasks. Using fingers or utensils for self-feeding. It is important to provide children with the opportunity to develop their fine motor skills throughout their lifespan.

Babies start with using gross grasp patterns to pick up objects and bring them to the mouth. One of the few opportunities toddlers have to manipulate small objects and develop in hand manipulation skills is during feeding time. Picking up small pieces of food helps to develop hand eye coordination, body awareness (where their mouth is in relation to the rest of their body), finger isolation, and pincer grasp.

As a child gets older they are expected to color, cut, and write. These are skills that need to be taught and are not something that they will inherently know. To work on pre-writing skills provide small pieces of chalk or crayons to encourage the use of a mature grasp. Place drawing or writing papers on a vertical surface such as an easel or wall to promote wrist extension with pencil and paper activities. Hand separation is an important aspect of cutting and writing. This is the ability to use the thumb side of the hand separate from the pinky side of the hand. Some activities that work on hand separation are holding beads in the palm of the hand and moving one bead at a time from the palm to finger tips without dropping any beads (this can be incorporated into a fun fusion bead activity, Lite Brite, or stringing small beads). Encourage kids to hold a small item in ring and pinky finger when using scissors for cutting.

Activities to promote fine motor skill development for the preschool child include but are certainly not limited to the following:

• stringing beads

• Lite Bright

• Using chalk on a chalkboard or dark color construction paper

• Fun Fusion beads

• lacing activities

• finger painting

• chopstick pom pom pick up (or use chopsticks to eat noodles at dinner time)

• Wikki sticks

• small stickers

• stamps

• playdoh

• different shape paper punches

There are a lot of systems working together that make for smooth and coordinated fine motor skills but participation in the above activities will help develop these skills and provide a solid foundation for success in the future.