Best ways to develop fine motor skills in kids

You must have heard a lot about fine motor skills. What are these skills? Are these skills important in your child's development? If yes, do you have any role in the development of these skills, or, how can you help to support your child's fine motor skill development? If you are a parent, who has these questions in your mind, then keep reading. You will find all your answers in this article.

What are Fine motor skills? 

Fine motor skills refer to our abilities to use the small muscles of our hand & fingers meaningfully to do a task.

We use fine motor skills in a number of tasks in our daily life like- 

➧Writing, 

➧Opening a lock with a key,

➧Opening a bottle to drink water, 

➧Colouring a picture, 

➧Buttoning/unbuttoning, 

➧Typing a keyboard, 

➧Tying shoelaces, to name a few.

Fine motor skills develop normally age-wise like any other milestone. But, for a child with some special needs like Cerebral Palsy, ASD, ADHD, SPD, or Learning disabilities, fine motor skill development is usually delayed, poor, or inadequate.

Why is Fine motor skills development important in a child's life? 

We use fine motor skills in a variety of tasks every day starting from squeezing out toothpaste to brush our teeth in the early morning to turning off the light switch before we go to bed at night.

Although these skills are natural & easy for us, these are complex skills that require many essential components like- sensory components, motor components, development of the large muscles of our body, praxis, etc.

If these prerequisites are not adequate, then a child has difficulty in using the small muscles of his hand & fingers with ease for his daily tasks which can be very frustrating for both the child & his parents.

Find about some simple activities to develop proximal stability in children in👇

https://abhipsaot.blogspot.com/2021/07/15-easy-activities-to-build-proximal.html

How to enhance fine motor skill development in children? 

Fine motor skills are very essential for efficiency in holding a pencil in a functional grip & for writing. These are the main areas of concern for many parents. 

Find some more easy fine motor activities for developing the functional pencil grip in children in:👇

https://abhipsaot.blogspot.com/2021/07/how-to-develop-functional-pencil-grasp.html

Apart from writing, we use fine motor skills in many other daily tasks like the ones listed above. 

Here, I will be describing some simple activities that you can easily do at home for developing the fine motor skills of your child so that he/she can perform his daily tasks independently & comfortably.

Some super easy Fine motor activities 

1-) Playdough activity 

Using playdough has multiple benefits for kids. Kids love to use it & you can keep them busy for hours with this thing.😄 You can also use kneaded “atta" as a variation.

Materials needed:-

▪️ Playdough (any colours)

▪️ Any small objects (coins, beads, beans, small pegs )

▪️ If you don’t have beads/small pegs, you can use green peas/raajma beans/chickpeas also.

▪️ Pencil

👉 Find the hidden treasure  

Steps:-   

1.Make a spherical shape playdough. 

2.Insert some small beads/coins in it.

3.Ask your kid to pinch the playdough with his fingers, find the bead and name it’s colour.

It’s an excellent activity to develop your child’s finger strength and fine motor skills.

➧ If beads are not available, you can put rajma beans/chickpeas inside the playdough & ask your child to remove them one by one.

👉 Pinch the playdough with 3 fingers 

 

Steps:-

 1. Knead the playdough or atta into a cylindrical shape.

 2.Ask your child to use his three fingers to pinch off small pieces of playdough.

3. Then, roll them into small circles.

Keep doing till all the playdough is finished.

👉 Making different shapes/letters/numbers

Roll the playdough into small cylindrical pieces. Ask your child to make different shapes/letters/numbers with it.

Let your kid use his/her imagination and make anything out of the playdough. 

It’s an excellent fine motor activity that builds their imaginative skills, attention span, eye-hand coordination as well.

👉 Write on playdough 

This is a wonderful activity to help develop and strengthen three finger grasp in kids. 

Steps:

1.Roll the playdough into a thick flat piece. 

2. Use a pencil to make lines/write letters on it slowly.

3. Ask your kid to copy you, or hold his hands and help him to make different strokes/ write letters on playdough.

 

2-) Q-Tip activities

A number of activities can be planned using a simple object like a Q-Tip that can be used for both fine motor skills and for learning different concepts in a playful way! 

Kids love to play and explore new ways of using their creative minds with this simple object!

Materials needed:-

▪ ️Some Q-tips(Earbuds)

▪️ Watercolours

▪️ A thick sheet of paper or a plain copy

👉Dot painting 
Make any simple pictures with dots(small circles) and let your kid use a Q-Tip( Earbud) to paint those dots !

 👉Paint letters with Q-tip 

Steps:

1.Write down letters on a thick sheet of paper.

2.Then, ask your kid to dip the Q tip in a colour & trace on them using different colours .

If he is learning to write letters for the first time, this can be a great prewriting activity. 

 

3-) Activities with common small objects

You can use common objects like “bindis", colourful buttons, color beads or stickers for these activities. With these simple daily used objects, you can make multipurpose activities.

Materials needed:-

▪️ Paper

▪️ Marker/sketch pens

▪️ Colourful Buttons

▪️ Bindis / Stickers

▪️ Cling film

👉Trace the pattern 

Steps: 

1. Make different patterns on a paper.

2. Ask your kid to put different colour buttons on the pattern from start till end.

3. Next, ask him/her to “Give me all yellow buttons”, “Give me all red buttons”.

 

👉Peel off the Bindis/Stickers 

This is another fun activity that works on the pincer grasp of a child which we use when we need to pick up or manipulate small objects with the tips of our fingers. 

Steps: 

1. Place a cling film on the patterns.

2. Ask your kid to count & put stickers/bindis on the pattern 1 by 1 from start to finish.

3. Next, ask to remove by peeling off using thumb and index fingers while counting.

4-) Simple paper folding activity

Any simple paper folding activity ( you can choose depending on your child’s age & paper folding skills).

Examle:- Ask your child to fold a paper into as many folds he can neatly. Or, if your child can imitate you, make some simple designs like a paper boat, or a rocket, a flower, a bird or anything your child likes.

It can be very useful to enhance different skills in your child like fine motor skills, motor planning, attention, visual processing skills, creativity, imitation skills, etc.

5-) Threading beads

Beads can be of different colours, shapes & sizes. Threading beads activity is another fun activity with numerous benefits. 

You can select large beads or beads with large holes at the initial stage. Then gradually can give your child smaller beads for threading as his fine motor control gets better and better.

6-) Picking up small objects

This simple activity is loved by kids & can be easily done with any small objects available at home! You can use your creativity to adapt this activity according to the interest and needs of your child.

steps: 

1. Spread a handful of "chickpeas", or "green peas", or "raajma beans" on a large flat plate.

2. Give a bowl to your child and ask him to pick up one by one using his two fingers, and put them inside the bowl.

Variation:-

1. To make it more challenging, you can mix up "chickpeas" & green peas". Give him 2 separate bowls.

2.  Then, ask him to separate chickpeas in one bowl & green peas in another bowl.

7-) Use of a spoon

For kids who can easily do activity-6, a spoon can be used to enhance their fine motor skills more.

steps:

1. Put some peas in a bowl.

2. Ask your kid to use a spoon to pick up the peas and put them inside a bottle one by one.

Variation:- You can use some suji, flour(atta), or even sand for this activity.

1. Put some suji in a bowl.

2. Use a spoon to collect the suji and pour it inside another small bowl or even a large-mouthed bottle.

3. Continue till you pour all the suji.

8-) Some other fun fine-motor activities

👉Opening & closing a zip-lock bag using fingers 

👉Putting coins inside a piggy bank 

👉Bursting bubble wrap! 

👉Opening & closing bottle/jar caps 

All of the above activities are easy to practice at home & are very effective to build a good fine motor control of your child. The daily activities that you & your child participate in can be much easier if a child has good gross motor & fine motor skills.

Try them out!

Enjoy reading!

Happy parenting to all my readers.😄

About the writer :-

The writer’s name is Abhipsa Parida. She is an occupational therapist specialised in pediatrics and has been handling kids with special needs since 5 years. She is quite experienced and skillful in observation, assessment and planning intervention for kids with special needs. She uses evidence based practice and is very creative and updated in her approach while handling kids with special needs. She has her own clinic in Bhubaneswar and has handled many kids of different age groups with varying needs.

If you have any queries, you can mail them at abhipsaot21@gmail.