Fine Motor Skills Activities and Ideas

Think about a time when your child had to use their fine motor skills. Maybe they had to use a pencil to write in school, button their shirt, eat with a fork, or use chopsticks to eat sushi. While it may seem like those activities are no big deal, actually having strong fine motor skills is important for kids’ development.

Fine motor skills activities are crucial to a child's overall healthy development. Children need hours and hours of play time and practice to develop the small muscles in the fingers and hands and coordination skills to manipulate objects.

 
Fine motor activities are crucial to a child’s development. Children need hours and hours of playtime and practice. This helps to develop the small muscles in the fingers and hands and coordination skills to manipulate objects. Occupational therapists often help children to develop these important abilities in children.


These skills begin to develop and birth and continue to improve throughout childhood development. Below you will find fine motor activities and ideas to help encourage healthy development.

What Are Fine Motor Skills?

The development of fine motor skills is a process that occurs over time. Fine motor skills are the smaller muscle movements we make – those necessary for coordination and dexterity. They give our hands the ability to do fine tasks such as writing, playing a musical instrument, completing puzzles, or drawing a picture.

 
There are specific developmental milestones that children should reach regarding motor skills in the arms, fingers and hands. This development begins at birth with the newborn baby’s grasp reflex – when anything touches an infant’s palm they will close their hand around it. Later, infants begin to develop abilities such as reaching out for things on purpose and grabbing toys. These skills then become more precise as children can begin picking up small objects between their thumb and first fingers with a pincer grip. During the toddler years and preschool years, fine motor skills really begin to develop as children can now hold and use many different writing objects for scribbling and making marks using crayons and paintbrushes.


The fingers and hands are developed further when children reach school age. Children perform activities such as pencil control, cutting out paper shapes, using a zipper, typing a shoelace, and coloring. This practice time is very important in the development of fine motor skills. These tasks require hand eye coordination, precision and patience which helps develop fine motor control.


As kids get older they continue to improve their fine motor abilities through playing board games and sports like tennis, golf or skateboarding which require fine tuned hand movements. Other fine motor activities for kids may include threading beads on string or sewing, picking up small objects with tweezers, using chopsticks or rolling playdough into small balls.

Why are Fine Motor Skills Important?

The dexterity and coordination of the small muscles in the hands and fingers are also knows as fine motor skills. Children and adults use these types of skills every single day. Fine motor skills are used to: get dressed, eat, draw, write, type, and more! When someone has difficulties with these skills, everyday tasks can be very difficult to master.

Fine Motor Skills can help children to:

  • Enhance cognitive development 
  • Improve prewriting and handwriting skills
  • Promote self-esteem
  • Explore different sensory experiences
  • Avoid boredom and develop leisure skills with hobbies and games
  • Develop social skills 
  • Improve attention span and more!


What Are Other Types of Motor Skills?


Not only are there developmental milestones for the fingers and hands, but there are also gross motor skills and visual-motor skills.

Fine Motor Skills Versus Gross Motor Skills

Gross motor skills are defined as the large muscle movements of the body including arms, legs, feet, and hands. Gross motor skills are required for activities such as kicking a ball, climbing playground equipment, or riding a bike. Just like fine motor skills, gross motor skills require fine-tuning through playtime activities that will help children improve their abilities over time.

For the fingers and hands to develop properly it is important to have strong gross motor abilities which require strength, flexibility and good balance.

Visual Motor Skills

Visual motor skills, otherwise known as visual motor integration is the ability to interpret visual information and respond with a motor action. Many fine motor activities require visual-motor skills which are crucial for fine motor skills development. Visual motor skills are also improved through fine motor activities such as drawing pictures and coloring, drawing with crayons and playing board games.


What is an Example of a Fine Motor Skill?

Fine motor skills are seen all throughout children’s lives in self-care tasks such as pouring their own drink, picking up coins, turning a doorknob, opening a bag of chips, picking up tiny toys and writing. Whether it’s fine manual dexterity required to play with Legos or art projects involving scissors, fine motor skills are complex and are required for many activities of daily living.


Some activities require more fine motor skill than others therefore it is important for parents and teachers provide plenty of opportunities for fine motor skill development during everyday playtime activities. It is also helpful to practice at home through various fine motor games suitable for specific age groups.

How Can Parents and Teachers Promote Fine Motor Skill Development? 

For parents, fine motor skills can be developed in everyday play. One fine motor activity is to encourage your child to participate in arts and crafts by painting with their fingers or using small utensils while cooking. Be creative! Provide plenty of opportunities for children to practice through activities such as stringing beads, using scissors to cut out pictures from magazines or drawing pictures. Fine motor skills are also required to use computer keyboards and other electronic devices that might require fine finger movements.

It’s always great for parents and teachers to help provide kids with the opportunity to play daily because this strengthens fine motor skills that are crucial for young development. Not only are these fine motor games fun but they are key components in occupational therapy sessions. 

It is important for development that these activities are not overly frustrating but rather introduce new challenges throughout their playtime. If you notice fine motor skill delays, get help from your pediatrician or occupational therapist. 

FINE MOTOR ACTIVITIES FOR INFANTS

Play time is so important for infants to develop motor skills. Babies need floor play to develop the postural control and shoulder muscle strength to provide stability for the hands and fingers to develop fine motor skills. Therefore, early on the building blocks of fine motor skills are developed through gross motor skills such as playing in prone, rolling over, sitting up, and crawling.

Babies need to move, coordinate and receive sensory input through touch and proprioception in order to develop postural stability to free up the hands to manipulate objects and achieve dexterity.

10 FINE MOTOR ACTIVITIES AND IDEAS FOR INFANTS TO HELP GET YOU STARTED (ALWAYS SUPERVISE):

  • Floor play visually attending to colorful objects.
  • Lay under a play gym and freely move arms towards the objects.
  • Use wrist or ankle rattles to encourage the infant to move his/her arms and legs.
  • Move an infant toy so the baby can visually track the toy. The baby can start to reach for the toy with one or both hands.
  • Free play on an infants’ side encourages the infant to bring their hands together.
  • Holding baby toys.
  • Reaching for baby toys or people’s faces.
  • Picking up small blocks or toys.
  • Dropping toys.
  • Banging toy on table or floor.

Read more fine motor activities for infants.

FINE MOTOR SKILL FUN ACTIVITIES FOR TODDLERS

As babies get older and begin to progress with their fine motor skill development, parents and child care providers can begin to offer new play opportunities. Toddlers are busy moving from one activity to the next so don’t expect long attention spans. Although for certain fine motor activities, some toddlers may engage in repetitive tasks completing the same task over and over for a extended period of time if they are highly interested.

10 FINE MOTOR ACTIVITIES AND IDEAS FOR TODDLERS TO HELP GET YOU STARTED (ALWAYS SUPERVISE):

  1. Poke at squishy objects (ie food play, squish toys, etc.) with their index finger.
  2. Put objects inside containers (recycled plastic jars are perfect for this).
  3. Scribbles on paper.
  4. Build towers with blocks.
  5. Bang toys together.
  6. Mirror play – hands can touch and interact with a mirror on the wall.
  7. Picking up Cheerios or other small foods.
  8. Water play with small sponges.
  9. Practice pouring liquids for outdoor play or in bath.
  10. Turn pages in books.

Read more fine motor activities for toddlers.

NEED MORE FINE MOTOR IDEAS?

The Basics of Fine Motor Skills is a comprehensive overview of fine motor development that includes age-appropriate fine motor activity suggestions for kids of all ages.  FIND OUT MORE.

FINE MOTOR ACTIVITIES FOR PRESCHOOLERS

As children continue to develop, always be providing “just right” fine motor activities for young children offering practice and the opportunity to build new skills. Preschool classrooms such be rich in fine motor activities and centers to encourage further fine motor skill development. These skills are essential for success in the classroom as the children get older.

Don’t forget to always be including gross motor skill activities to strengthen the shoulder girdle and core muscles to provide the stability for efficient fine motor skill development.

10 FINE MOTOR ACTIVITIES AND IDEAS FOR PRESCHOOLERS TO HELP GET YOU STARTED (ALWAYS SUPERVISE):

  1. Coloring on paper.
  2. Painting on easels.
  3. Play dough activities.
  4. Build towers with small blocks.
  5. Lacing beads or objects.
  6. Early scissor skill practice.
  7. Using glue.
  8. Folding paper.
  9. Using interlocking blocks.
  10. Playing with stickers.

Read more about Fine Motor Activities for Preschoolers.

Check out this HUGE collection of Handprint Art that you can download for free.

As children enter elementary school the stakes are raised even higher on fine motor skill development. Students need to have all the building blocks in place in order to have legible handwriting to write letters, take spelling tests, and complete math assignments. Technology is frequently not introduced for writing assignments until third grade and later so the early years have a focus on written assignments.

Without proper fine motor skill development throughout a child’s lifespan prior to school, tasks such as handwriting, using math manipulatives, managing school supplies, and more can be very difficult.

When the foundational skills of strength, coordination, and knowledge are not well consolidated, children struggle to perform motor tasks. READ MORE ON THIS SCHOOL FINE MOTOR SKILLS HERE.

15 Elementary School Fine Motor Activity Ideas

Here are 15 motor activities which are beneficial to kids in elementary school:

  1. Tying Shoes
  2. Zipping coat
  3. Cutting with Scissors 
  4. Drawing Circles and other shapes
  5. Lacing activities  
  6. Watercolor painting 
  7. Paper folding like origami or fortune tellers
  8. Make slime or play dough
  9. Fidgets
  10. Using tape
  11. Playing cards
  12. Counting money and putting coins in a bank
  13. Building with interlocking blocks like LEGOs
  14. Stringing beads to make jewelry
  15. Playing board games

Read fine motor activities for kindergarten here.

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT FINE MOTOR DEVELOPMENT

Fine Motor Activities and Ideas Freebies – check out all of the fine motor skills free printable activity ideas from Your Therapy Source

Occupational Therapy Activity Ideas at Home – Activities that are simple to carry out should be short, use materials from around the house and be motivating to the kids. 

Fine motor and reading – encouraging the development of graphomotor skills may be important in kindergarten for early reading. 

Fine Motor, Visual Function, and Reading in Children – normal binocular vision may provide an important sensory input for the development of fine motor skills and reading.  

Predicting Handwriting Using Reading, Fine Motor, and Visual Motor Skills – research on predicting handwriting performance in kindergarteners using reading, fine motor and visual motor measures.

Link Between Reading, Visual Perception, and Visual–Motor Integration – phonological awareness and visual–motor integration predicted reading outcomes one year later.

Fine Motor and Vocabulary Development – having greater fine motor skills improves lexical processing for high body-object words. 

Fine motor skills activities are crucial to a child's overall healthy development.  Children need hours and hours of play time and practice to develop the small muscles in the fingers and hands and coordination skills to manipulate objects.

 Read more here.