Holistic Tutoring

How to Foster Fine Motor Skills

If you have a toddler or young child you’ll most definitely have come across the term ‘fine motor skills.’ These are the skills necessary for many aspects of self-care and everyday activities (think putting on shoes, feeding themselves) and is also critical for the development of emergent writing. The Queensland Government Early Childhood website defines fine motor skills as “the movement and control of small muscles groups, including hands, wrists, fingers, feet and toes. Movement and physical play from birth is important for the development of fine motor skills, as these build the foundations for everyday activities later in life; like buttoning a shirt, tying shoelaces, playing a musical instrument, typing, writing and more.”

Their website suggests some great ideas for including fine motor activities in day-to-day life. You can read this here. Or, read below for a range of fun tasks to foster these skills.

Everyday activities:
- Playing with zips and buttons (some stores like Temu stock activity boards with zips, buttons and clasps attached).
- Watering plants with a watering can
- Throwing balls out of ball pit – not only do ball pits get your kids active and excited, but throwing the balls in and out of the pit utilises fine motor skills.
- Throwing and kicking or dribbling a soft soccer ball – this also assist with gross motor skills. Join a football club and you’ll cover social skills also!
- Using mini forks and spoons when eating dinner.
- Connect 4 games and stacking blocks practise fine motor precision. Jenga and UNO Stacko are fun at any age – littlies can just play with stacking the pieces and then pushing them over.

Bath time:
- Filling up and pouring out cups and containers. My little girl likes to play with her tea set in the bath and makes “cups of tea.”
- Reaching and catching bath toys and putting them away at the end of the bath.

Arts and crafts:
- Using blunt kids’ scissors. A fun activity is painting a piece of paper, cutting it into small squares and then sticking these on another piece of paper with PVA glue (can be found at Bunnings).
- Drawing with crayons, and pencils. Drawing on the concrete with chalk is an enjoyable outdoor activity for hot days.
- Rolling out playdough with a rolling pin. My daughter is also interested in mixing together homemade play dough and squishing the dough.
- Pressing cookie cutter shapes into playdough
- Spotlight and Temu stock foam sheets that you can cut holes into. Then, have your child push items through the holes (eg pegs).

Cooking/baking:
- My toddler loves baking with me. She strengthens her fine motor skills by pouring yoghurt and flour into my muffin mix (as well as gripping the wooden spoon to direct batter into her mouth!)

As you can see, the possibilities are really endless. What activities have you used?

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