Fine Motor Skills
By: Dr. Abe Kopolovich, DPT, MBA, JD-IP
Read on for ideas for improving fine motor skills and fine motor activities for kids.
Fine motor skills are necessary for every task that a child completes. From play, to handwriting, to managing clothing fasteners, and coloring; Fine Motor Skills are needed and an area of defect for many children. Motor skills like pincer grasp and hand strength are essential for a child’s development and ability to use their hands in small motor movements.
Fine Motor Skills
The fine motor skills that we share in the creative activities below are some of our favorite ways to play! This page is a huge resource of fun ways to play and learn while working on fine motor skills. Most activities here are easy prep and use recycled materials or items you might find around the home.
Occupational Therapists can use these activities in treatment and parents can do these projects at home for quiet time or developmental skill-building. Almost every activity you see here contains developmental information and explanations of what skills your child will be working on with the activities. I love to discuss the basics of playful activities and why it helps with developmental skills and functional tasks like handwriting, scissor skills, dressing, and shoe tying.
All of these tasks require a child’s fine motor skills. Skills such as bilateral hand coordination, wrist extension, gross grasp strength, pincer grasp, open thumb web space, and separation of the sides of the hand, are just a few examples of fine motor skills that are essential for functional development and effective manipulation of tools.
Add these fine motor activities to your therapy tool box:
This page will be updated frequently, but it’s not always easy to add in new links on a daily (or even weekly!) basis. Stop back often and check out the new ideas. Join us in a weekly conversation by signing up to join the newsletter. You’ll find a sign up box at the bottom of this website.
FINE MOTOR SKILLS ACTIVITIES FOR KIDS:
- Create Your Own Race Track
- Spring Sensory Seek and Find
- Sensory Soup with Fine Motor Sorting
- Fine Motor Strengthening with Color Match
- Cereal Box Fine Motor Coordination Activity
- DIY Lacing Cards
- Manipulating Coins Fine Motor Skills
- Best Fine Motor Play Ideas for Kids
- Tripod Grasp with Pipe Cleaners
- Textured Shaving Cream Play Finger Isolation
- Pom Pom Snowflake Line Awareness Craft
- Sight Word Scooping
- Golf Tee Hammering
- Honey Bee Pinch Pins
Handwriting and fine motor skills
Fine motor skills are essential in the classroom, and they can impact learning. For more information, check out this resource on fine motor skills needed in the classroom.
Here is a resource on cursive writing, much of which requires pencil control, in-hand manipulation, and motor planning of fine motor movements in order to form letters. While there is evidence of cursive handwriting being a more efficient and functional form of written work in the child with dysgraphia or other handwriting concerns, there is a component of fine motor dexterity needed for cursive writing.
Scissor skills and handwriting
As an occupational therapist, working on scissor skills with kids is one of my favorite goal areas. There are so many ways to get creative with modifications to paper, lines, and scissors. The fine motor activities that work on the muscles and dexterity needed for scissor use are fun, too! Stop back soon as we add new activities all the time.
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