Here are some great activities to try!
How can I promote my child’s Fine Motor skills?
Fine motor skills involve using the small muscles of the hands in coordination with the eyes. These skills are essential for performing everyday activities such as manipulating zippers and buttons, feeding self with utensils, and school related skills including, colouring, cutting and printing. The development of fine motor skills involve many different components including; using both hands together to perform a task, hand and finger strength, eye hand coordination, hand dominance, the ability to manipulate tools, and overall body awareness.
Here are some great summer activities to try with your child;
- Use tweezers to pick up small objects (i.e pompoms, rocks) and place them into a container
- Using play-dough or thera-putty, place small objects inside and make it into a ball, then create a game to find the objects.
- Use string and beads, or boondoggle, to make a necklace
- Sidewalk chalk
- Fun colouring activity books
- Arts and crafts activities (i.e. colouring, cutting, gluing)
- Painting fun using q-tips, sponges, paint brushes, eye droppers
- Paint rocks or flower pots
- Help plant flowers in the garden using a shovel to dig, pull weeds and plant small seeds
- Use spray bottles to water plants and flowers
- Water table and/or sand table-pouring, scooping, mixing
- Build sand castles at the beach
- Blowing and popping bubbles
- Practise cutting skills using play-dough, paint strips, and straws
- Encourage your child to help with meal-prep by opening food packages, measuring, pouring, stirring and mixing ingredients.
- During meal time, use toothpicks to pick up small pieces of food (i.e. cheese squares, fruit)
- Have your child help hang laundry to dry using clothespins
- Your child may enjoy pencil and paper activities that can be taken along on a trip such as mazes, dot to dot, word searches, and colour by number.
- “Where’s Waldo” or “I spy” books are a great way to promote your child’s visual motor skill.
- Promote handwriting skills by having your child help create weekly menus and/or grocery lists
- Introduce games such as; Lite brite, Operation, Bed bugs, Perfection, Don’t break the ice, Don’t spill the beans, Jenga, Legos and K’nex.
