Fine Motor Skill Activity suggestions

The key with building fine motor skills is little and often so I would suggest doing something a couple of times everyday. Don't feel you need to try them all but maybe try two or three different ones several times each week.

All of these suggestions will help to improve fine motor skills and therefore help with pencil control and handwriting. Almost all of these suggestions can be done while listening to an audiobook.

• Building Lego

• Colouring in 

• Jigsaw puzzles or 3D puzzles

• Playdough/plasticine/clay

• Juggling

• Cooking - ask your child to help in the kitchen; peeling and chopping fruit/vegetables, kneading bread/pizza dough, rubbing butter into flour to make biscuits/scones etc

• Eye dropper colour tests - Put some water in a few glasses. Pour a few drops of food colouring into each one to make different coloured water in each glass. Have a couple of empty bowls and glasses where your child can use an eye dropper to experiment with mixing different coloured waters together. This can also be done with vinegar instead of water and a bowl of bicarbonate of soda that will fizz up when the vinegar is dropped in. 

• Tweezers - use tweezers to pick up small objects and move them

• Clothes pegs - peg clothes on washing line, peg 

• Scissor activities

• Pick up sticks game

• Tug of War - play tug of war with small things such as straws, strip of fabric, short length of string etc

• Squirty bottle - let your child squirt water out of squirty bottle to water plants, play outside etc

• Mop up water with a sponge/cloth and then squeeze/wring out as much as possible

• Vertical and or inclined Surface - activities on a vertical surface can increase wrist balance. Writing, drawing, colouring, painting on a vertical surface can help to increase wrist stability and muscle growth of hand. 

• Card games such as snap, go fish, pairs etc

• Paper Strips - place your child's palm at one end of a strip of paper and ask him to only use middle finger to get the strip to scrunch up under his hand. This really helps in developing the muscle tone of hand and giving space while writing. 

• Elastic bands gymnastics. Put two elastic bands of the same size around thumb, index finger and middle finger. Try to move fingers. Put more elastic bands on making in harder to move fingers. This helps develop the muscles which will help with making space while writing.