Play Ideas for Encouraging Fine Motor Skills

In this blog we're going to explore some of the many ways you can encourage your children to develop their fine motor skills through play.

There are many simple yet engaging activities for you to choose and offer to your children depending on their age and skills.

Let's get started... take a read below!

Peeling & Placing Stickers

Draw dots onto a piece of paper, recycled paper towel roll or balloon and ask them to stick the stickers over the dots. 

Tip: If they are struggling to get the stickers off the paper, peel the backing sheet off.

You can also stick the stickers onto their clothing for them to pick and peel off.

Threading

Start by threading bigger items like the Grapat rings onto a playsilk.

Once confident they can move onto smaller things such as this peg and threading board shown below.

The pieces can be used to thread onto a string and also pegged into a board and stacked up high.

If you're finding its a little too hard for them instead try threading onto a stationary thing such as dried spaghetti and fruit loops. Stick it to the table using blu tac or playdough or pierce the pieces through and egg carton to stand them up.

As they master this skill you can move onto smaller beads on a string.

Playdough

Playdough can be squished, shaped and pulled apart over and over again! It’s sure to help strengthen their hands and fingers whilst playing.

Need some play ideas?

1. Roll out snakes & snip them
Encourage your child to roll out the dough into a long snakes. Use some safety scissors to snip it up into little pieces. It's a fun and hands-on way to begin using scissors and develop their fine motor skills.

2. Combine playdough with loose parts
Grab loose parts such as crystals, mandala pieces or buttons to combine with your playdough. Children will enjoy pushing them into the playdough, making patterns and mandalas, counting and role play such as sprinkles on a cupcake.

3. Animal Footprints
Roll out your dough, grab some of your little ones favourite animals and push their footprints into it. Close your eyes and take turns getting each other to guess which animal footprints are in the dough. You can also disucss the animal sounds and sing songs about them.

If you'd like some more play ideas I'd reccommend having a read of another blog, Playdough Activities for Toddlers and Beyond.

Posting

Depending on their age and skills you can start by posting with Grapat rings or coins into a recycled formula tin or box or the Totli Box is a great all-in-one toy too.

You can use a variety of other loose parts like balls, mandala pieces, pom poms or Nins for different shapes and sizes as well.

As they get older and need more of a challenge move onto smaller items such as counters or coins into a money box. This simple DIY is using water colour paints, an egg carton and the metal rimmed counting chips for posting through the slots.

Tongs

When children use tongs they are practicing to squeeze and release. You can try offering this activity with children from around 18 months old.
Try setting up an activity with pom poms to colour sort or put into a recycled bottle.

Pictured below are the straight tongs and 1.5cm pom poms with Connetix Tiles.

You can also offer this activity on a larger scale with ping pong balls and the handy scooper. 

Pegs

Offer pegs to squeeze and release onto a paddle pop stick. You can also do this with coloured pegs and sticks for colour matching or a draw a number on top and ask them to put the same amount of pegs onto the paddle pop stick.

Another great way is to get them to either take off or attach the pegs around the outside of a bowl or container.

Don't forget about practical life skills as well, ask them to help hang the washing up!

As they need more of a challenge peg boards are great for fine motor work. Pictured below are the Mini Bilibos for pegs and Peg Brite.

Drawing

Drawing helps children learn to control their finger grip and movement.
Offer children a variety of different mediums such as pencils, crayons & pens.

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Children will begin with making marks before moving onto lines, shapes, people and forming letters.

Take it outdoors 

If your child isn't the biggest fan of drawing try taking it outside on a larger scale!

Use chalk to draw on the driveway or water and a paint brush - Both are fun and simple.

We also love to do this with the Twisty Dropper which is great for squeezing!

 Puzzles

Puzzles are great for manoeuvring the pieces into place. Pick a size that’s not overwhelming for them and perhaps a picture of an intest of theirs for extra excitement such as dinosaurs.

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