As parents, you play an important role in your child’s fine motor skill development. Developing fine motor skills in young children helps lay the foundation for future skills like writing and self-care. So it is imperative for parents to provide opportunities that are fun and interactive for your child.
Importance of Fine Motor Skills
Basically, Fine Motor skills involve the use of small muscles that control the little one’s hand, fingers, and thumb. All these little muscles help kids perform essential tasks like feeding, grasping, writing, drawing, in a much better way. As a result, they will learn self-care which will directly boost the kid’s self-esteem and confidence.
Kids often struggle a lot with their motor skills development as everyone has different rates of development.They can often become frustrated when they can’t complete every day tasks. For example, a child may have a difficult time holding scissors so they avoid cutting exercises because they feel it’s too difficult.
Activities to Develop Fine Motor Skills
You don’t have to do anything fancy nor do you have to buy expensive toys to help your child develop their fine motor skills. It can be easily improved through play and normal every day actions.There are different ways in which as a parent you can develop fine motor skills of your little one, some of them are as follows –
Toys and games
There are a lot of toys available in the market that help a lot in developing fine motor skills for both toddlers and infants. If your little one is going to school then you can buy board games with pieces for them. Play board games that involve rolling dice.In this way, they can pick the pieces and move it all at ideal places. For example, I have bought Jenga – a strategy game for my daughter which really helped her a lot to develop fine motor skills.
Drawing and painting
You can also develop fine motor skills in your little one through drawing, by using markers, crayons, pencils, and chalk. Remember that it’s not important that your kid’s drawing must be perfect, even scribbling works fine. You can also give opportunity to your little one to paint through fingers and get a bit messy. But try giving them painting brushes, as they will learn to gain greater control through holding brushes.
Crafts activities
You can involve kids Paper Cutting activities to build skills and control in your kid. Activities can be simple or complex as you want them .
You can also try origami, a fun paper-folding art. Origami is my daughter’s personal favorite activity since she loves doing craft a lot. Since origami is a paper-folding art it builds a lot of skills and is available in both simple and complex forms.
Self-care activities
Also, encourage your little one to do most of their activities themselves like tying shoes, buttoning and zipping shirts and jackets. Self-dressing is also a great way to incorporate fine motor practice. During meal time tell your little one to practice scooping on their own by using a spoon or a fork.
Play-dough and putty
Play-dough and putty can also help improve a child’s fine motor skills. Encourage your child to squeeze, stretch, pinch and roll “snakes” or “worms” with the play clay. You can even have your child try to cut the play-dough with scissors.
Gardening and planting
Digging and gardening may require activities which require smaller muscle control. For instance, transferring seedlings into a garden requires hand-eye coordination skills to safely carry the smaller plant to the new hole. Your child will also need to be able to grasp a trowel to dig and to use a pincer grasp when picking up seeds to plant.
If you still have a lot of concerns about your kid’s fine motor skills development you can reach out to your pediatrician. Seek some help from them and try getting occupational therapy!
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We do all these activities with my grandsons.
They didn’t have a garden in Mexico and loved to garden with me.
After going back they made my son buy them plants and now they grow even raspberries, lemons, chillies
Educational toys and learning activities are great ways to develop motor skills. I’m encouraging my kids to help me in gardening too nowadays.
Looking back, I think drawing painting and toys were the keys for my growing years… that was a lifetime ago, of course.
Developing fine motor skills is the first step when kids start learning. Toys, games, drawing, holding a pencil, blocked, stacking, play dough, even some silly tasks in the kitchen, gardening, picking up clothes, arranging things are some easy daily activities which kids enjoy and keep them occupied along with learning and developing motor skills too.
Very apt points. My nani usee to give kneaded floor to my daughter so even if she ate it it was safe.
Deepika Sharma
Wow great options you had suggested here. I had done most of these with my girls. I believe arts and crafts have such a positive effect on child’s overall development. they not help in building fine motor skills but also help in raising creativity and imagination power in kids.
Educational toys are an important part of the child’s development. Babies and toddlers need to work on motor skills, hence choose the toys accordingly.
Fine motor skills are a very significant part of the overall growth of children. These are certainly very effective tips to develop fine motor skills in kids. Besides it, we can also include them in household chores like folding clothes, grooming, sorting vegetables, etc.
Superb! Educational toys, art, and craft activities are so perfect for developing motor skills in young children. I recently turn my balcony into a garden to let my kids learn gardening activities, and yes, the difference I am witnessing in them is worthy enough.
So true and as schools are shut they lack those skills. We parents are trying hard to make it more easy for the kids
Developing fine and motor skills are very vital for kids growth and development. Apart from all the activities mentioned by you you can also improve them in fun way like helping in clipping of clothes.. Bursting bubbles on bubble paper and so on.
Totally agree fine motoring skills are so vital..totals tips are bang on buddy I used almost all of these for my kiddo
Yes, Fine motor skills are very much needed. In fact one article on the same topic is still lying in my drafts folder, as I didn’t get time to complete it.😀
I really like the simple and practical tips you has share for parents to understand and apply.
These tips are so practical and I’ve been doing these for my daughter and son
Fine motor skills are very important part of child development. There are number of activities than can be used to develop the motor skills. Cutting paper, clipping clothes, using brushes, chopping soft vegetable with playing knife, rolling the play dough – all becomes great medium to enhance the fine motor skills.
Fine motor skills are one of the most important skills that kids should learn at young age. You have shared really great options that will help parents to develop fine motor skills in kids.
For fine motor skills educational toys are always proof that they are the best way for kids to learn and enjoy too. I really liked the tips and suggestions you shared.
The activities that you have pointed out are all different from what we have been seeing. Especially gardening. Noone would thing that it could be an option for developing fine motor skills in kids.
My kids are self sufficient and hence I have been termed as a lazy mother. But as you said self dressing has indeed helped them in developing motor skills.