Fine Motor Activities

Fine Motor Activities

There are many online and print resources that provide suggestions for activities that promote fine motor skill development (see list at end of chapter). This selection of fine motor activities and games represents curricular activities for both open-ended play and teacher-facilitated work with individual children or small groups. All fine motor activities contribute to the development of the visual/perceptual skills of depth perception, visual tracking, and focus, but activities can be loosely grouped into three general categories of pinching/grasping, dexterity, and strengthening exercises and games that require the use or practice of fine motor skills.

Pinching/Grasping:

• Using the thumb and index finger, tongs, tweezers, or a spoon to pick up small items such as pompoms, cotton balls, beads, and move them from one place to another (use small segmented tray or bowls for objects)
• Using water droppers with colored water or paint
• Bead-stringing: wooden beads, colored pasta, buttons, thread spools (with shoelaces, pipe cleaners, or other easy-to-handle stringing materials at first)
• Clothespins: hanging doll clothes, affixing to the sides of cards or boxes for matching games
• Sewing/lacing with large plastic needles and yarn or shoelaces on lacing boards or prepunched Styrofoam trays
• Tracing/dot-to-dot pictures
• Gluing small objects on paper (e.g., beans)
• Tearing paper: collages
• Puzzles (especially knobbed variety for youngest children)
• Pegboards: putting golf tees, dowels, or pegs into holes
• Card games that require cards to be turned over one at a time
• Using the flat side of chubby crayons to draw with
• Painting with sponges cut into small pieces

Hand and/or Wrist Strength:

• Screwing jar lids on and off
• Putting together and taking apart nuts and bolts (start with large plastic variety and move to real metal ones of different sizes)
• Using small mallets to hammer golf tees into block of modeling clay
• Using hole punchers to make confetti
• Using ice cream or melon scoops to pick up marbles or other small objects
• Pouring liquid or solid materials (e.g., rice) from one cup or small pitcher to another
• Use modeling materials (play dough, Plasticene clay) to roll coils, make balls, and press clay pieces together
• Stretching rubber bands over a small box or other solid shape
• Stapling and removing staples from paper

Dexterity (Coordinated Movements):

• Stacking objects such as blocks, buttons, cubes
• Nesting boxes of different sizes
• Using safety pins
• Fitting shapes into matching holes
• Playing with a keyboard (either musical or typing)
• Sharpening pencils (with rotary or handheld sharpener)
• Passing a squishy ball from one hand to the other or from child to child
• Finger painting
• Easel painting and writing on vertical surfaces

Games (Lippincott, 2006):

• Air ponguse empty spray bottle or turkey baster to blow Ping-Pong balls or pompoms back and forth across a line
• Finger tug-of-warplay tug of war with crooked index fingers (works on “O” grip)
• Challenges: see how many small objects child can pick up before set kitchen timer goes off
• Finger “push ups” with clothespins
• Finger soccer or football (flicking crumpled paper balls or pompoms on tabletop)

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