Fine Motor Practice Ideas

Hello Preschool Families,

Fine motor skills are an essential part of preschool. Many children enter school with low fine motor skills. We use a variety of activities at school to develop these skills, but you can also help your child develop these skills even further at home during play and daily activities. Here are some ideas that you could try:

• Lace beads on a string or pipe cleaner. You can even combine this with patterns practice by alternating colors! Or, if you purchase letter beads, you can practice spelling words or your child's name using the beads. 
• Playdough-- children strengthen many muscles when using playdough. You can also add various materials for your child to use with the playdough to further fine motor development. Ideas for materials you could use include: pasta, candles, googly eyes, rocks/pebbles, beads, buttons, shells, colored rice,  bottle caps, wooden or plastic letters/numbers, and stamps.
• Stamps--let your child use stamps (letters, numbers, or anything) to spell words or create artwork. Your child will learn how much pressure is needed to get enough ink on the stamps and push it down onto the paper, which will help to develop fine motor muscles.
• Make pasta necklaces! Use regular or colored pasta and string it onto pipecleaners or yarn to create a necklace. You could also make bracelets in the same way!
• Lacing cards-- purchase (or make) a set of lacing cards for your child to practice weaving a string in and out of the holes.
• Pipecleaners and colanders--give your child a colander and some pipe cleaners and instruct him to push the pipe cleaners through the holes in the colander. Alternatively, you could purchase artificial flowers and have your child arrange them in the holes of an upside-down colander. 
• Beads on spaghetti--place some pieces of uncooked spaghetti into a ball or clump of playdough. Provide your child with beads to place on the spaghetti. Your child can also practice making patterns with the beads during this activity.
• Sensory writing tray--place salt, sugar, jello powder, sand, or anything of similar consistency into a small try. Let your child use her finger (or an object such as a wand) to write letters or numbers in the tray. This provides practice with writing, letter/number recognition, and fine motor skills.
• Pom pom drop game -- use empty water bottles and place a number on each bottle. Provide your child with a container of pom poms. Have your child place the correct number of pom poms into each bottle. Alternatively, you could also see how many pom poms your child can fit in each bottle (for this one, you might want to have bottles of different sizes and/or different sizes of pom poms to compare how many fit). 
• Painting with Q-tips--if you don't mind getting a little messy, you can get out some paint, paper, and Q-tips. Have your child paint with the Q-tips instead of a paintbrush. 
• Use jumbo tweezers or tongs to pick up small objects and place them onto a mat or into another container (such as pom poms, buttons, bottle caps, small toys, beads, beans, pasta, etc.). One idea is to use jumbo tweezers to place pom poms into an ice cube tray. Your child should place one pom pom in each section of the tray.
• Paint with water outside on the pavement. When the weather is a little nicer, give your a child a cup of water and a paintbrush. Let her use this to paint pictures outside on the driveway or sidewalk. 
• Spider Web Game--tie white string in a basket to create a web. Place toy spiders in the bottom of the basket. Instruct your child to use a clothespin to get the spiders out of the web.
• Hole Punch Game--combine math and fine motor skills! Roll the dice to see what number you get and then punch out that number of dots. The first one to the finish line wins. 
• Pipettes and Water play--fill cups with water and food coloring. Place a pipette in each cup and let your child play with the water. Alternatively, you could also use eyedroppers. 
• Tracing Lines with Gems--draw lines on construction paper and then have your child place colored gems/stones on the lines to "trace" them. Alternatively, you could also use buttons, beads, or pasta.
• Cutting Mazes--draw a "maze" for your child to cut on a piece of paper. Your child should try to follow the lines with scissors as closely as possible.

These are just a few ideas! Hopefully you find some of these helpful for your child at home. 

Blessings,
​Ms. Barker