Ideas for Fine Motor Skills Development in Pre-K Children:

Fine motor skills include our hand skills (coordination between both hands, finger dexterity, and muscle strength, and our eyes (being able to move our eyes and control the movements with small eye muscles). For the purposes of this post, fine motor skills of the hands are the focus.

Hand skills in babies and young children develop through a trajectory of developmental processes and are greatly influenced by the environment and activities that the child is exposed to. It is so important to promote functional fine motor skills in kids! Why? Because hand skills set the foundation for almost every activity that humans do - think about how your hand skills influence you feeding yourself, getting dressed and undressed, and managing your kitchen tools or your keys for your house and car. What about signing your name, and managing bills, coins, and credit cards in your purse or wallet? Typing, video-gaming, doing your hair, performing job duties? Taking care of pets, bathing, and dressing your kids? The list goes on and on!

Preschoolers need lots of hands-on experiences to develop strong fine motor skills that will allow them to successfully participate in their daily activities. There are many ways to promote functional fine motor skills development in your preschooler. Remember that skill levels will vary depending on the age of your child, as well as their developmental level. If your child has a disability, you can seek out specialized care and ideas through your pediatrician or a local occupational therapist.

Here are some ideas to promote fine motor skills in the preschool or elementary-aged child- remember to always take precautions with small items and children who may be at risk for choking. Always supervise your children with small items!

Ideas to Promote Fine Motor Skills:

• Feeding & Eating: let your child feed themselves using their fingers - small veggies & fruits, and bite-size food. Small pieces will enhance the use of their thumb, index, and middle fingers for dexterity, and will help to develop the arches of their hands.

• Encourage utensil use for feeding, cutting, scooping using utensils with kid-friendly wide handles

• Make edible necklaces using Cheerios or fruit loops, pretzels, dry pasta, etc.

• Clip clothespins to various items (use plastic bowls or pieces of cardboard)

• Toaster tongs or tweezers for picking up objects - use different objects and categorize them by color, type, size, etc. Use the tong to pick them up and place them down.

• Playdoh or putty activities

• Use small squeeze bottles to spray (water plants, use in bathtub, outdoor water play)

• Tear paper, crumple it, and glue it to another surface (i.e. tissue paper is excellent for this!)

• Use SHORT CRAYONS (1-inch) for coloring to promote a 3-finger grasp (thumb, index, and middle finger).

• Game & play ideas that promote the use of fine motor skills:

  • Dragon Snacks™

  • Hungry Hungry Hippos®

  • Shark Bite™

  • Don’t Break the Ice

  • The Sneaky, Snacky, Squirrel Game™

  • Zingo!®

  • Legos

  • Shape sorters & inset puzzles (Melissa and Doug company makes EXCELLENT items that are durable for the long term!).

Lastly, a word of caution about young children and technological devices: limit technological device time for your preschool children. Although it may seem that they are highly engaged on an Ipad, time on technology is a sedentary activity that does not require the gross motor skills, visual motor skills, or fine motor skills needed for kids to learn to move and coordinate their muscles in the real world. Maximize your child’s awake time with non-technological toys and activities as much as possible!