Fine motor activities

There are many targeted fine motor activities to improve your child’s skills , but the main key to success is still all about practise, practise and then...practise some more!

Keep the activities varied, and make them fun because if your child is bored or frustrated, there really is no point in trying to engage them in a skill building activity.

Here are some fine motor activities for you to try:

• Tearing and cutting

  Use paper with different texture and thickness, newspaper, typing paper, thin cardboard etc.

  Let your child tear or cut them into strips. You can also use children’s craft scissors that cut different patterns.

  Draw outlines in various shapes with a thick magic marker and let them tear or cut out the different shapes. Use these shapes to make a picture, and glue them onto a different piece of paper.

  Choose a topic and find pictures in magazines to tear or cut out, stick them onto another piece of paper as a collage.
  

• Lids and containers
  Save various different shaped container and lids from around the house and keep them in box.

  This is a great activity to either mix up the lids and let your child match them to the right container, as well as learning to either screw or press the lids back onto the container.
  

• Pegs
  This is a fantastic fine motor activity for your special needs child. Cut a shape out of an old cardboard box, and using wooden pegs (The kind that you squeeze on one end so that the other end opens.) show your child how to peg them on and off around the edge of the cardboard.

  Make a mask. Using a paper plate cut out eyes, nose and a mouth. Paint and colour the mask, and use the tearing activity above to or pegs to make the hair.
  

• Locks and keys
  Cut out 5(or any number you lie!) pieces of cardboard and number them with a large magic marker.

  Take these numbers and stick them under different locks around your house. Now give your child 5 different keys and let him find the locks starting with 1 in the correct numerical order.

  He then has to find which key fits into the lock, and unlock the door. You can also number the keys, depending on your child’s abilities.

  This fine motor activity is great for counting, recognising numbers, sorting and fine motor skills.
  
  

• Macaroni and spaghetti
  My boys loved playing with the macaroni and spaghetti.

  Take a piece of macaroni that is slightly curved, let your child hold it with their thumb and pointer finger. Now stake a piece of spaghetti and push it through the back end of the macaroni.

  As you do this the spaghetti will break up and shoot out of the front end of the macaroni.

  This can get messy so, do it outside on the grass.

  Take an empty spice shaker with large holes and fill it with spaghetti, let your child shake the spaghetti out through the holes. Afterwards they can put the spaghetti back into the container through the holes.

• Play dough
  Always a favourite. You can get cookie cutter and small plastic rolling pins from most toy shops. Roll out the play dough and cut different shapes.

  You can also take balls of play dough and squeeze them into funny, blobby shapes. Add some plastic eyes that you can get from any craft shop, and create a whole army of blob monsters!

• Spray bottles
  Fill a spray bottle with water and show your child how to spray out a mist using there index finger on the lever.
  
  
• Lacing activities Cut out some basic shapes, like foot prints, a cat’s face, or a house from thick cardboard. Punch holes around the outside of the shape. Using wool with a piece of Sellotape wound tightly around the end, or a shoelace, let your child thread around the shape.
  
  

• Sponges
  This a great summer out door activity.

  Fill a tub with water and put a variety of sponges in it. Show your child how to squeeze the water out of the sponge with their fingers.

  Alternatively, you can add some bubble bath in the water, let them froth up the water to form bubbles .Let them wash their bike or wagon.
  
  

• Coins and Buttons Collect coins and buttons of varying sizes, and an empty container that you can cut a slot in the lid.

  Let your child pick up the coins and buttons, without sliding them to the edge of the table, and then put the objects into the container.
  
  

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Gross Motor Activities/ Speech Activities/ Sensory Integration Activities