Fun Ways To Help Strengthen Fine Motor Skills
Building fine motor skills is an important part of helping your child learn and grow. Fine motor skills will help your child grasp a pencil when it's time, be able to pick up small items, hold a pair of scissors and cut on the proper line, and other activities. There are several ways to help develop and strengthen these skills. To keep it from feeling like a chore, make the activities fun and enjoyable for your preschooler.
Tear And Glue
Have your preschooler tear up pieces of colorful construction paper into small pieces. Mix the pieces to blend the colors, then have your child glue the small pieces onto another piece of paper that has a shape or a picture drawn on it.
Cereal Necklaces
Create cereal necklaces using pieces of twine and various cereals such as Cheerios, Fruit Loops and Frosted-O's. Have your child thread the cereal onto the twine to create an edible necklace. It's a fun and tasty way to strengthen those fine motor skills.
Sticker Play
Draw different shapes onto a piece of paper, then have your child place stickers along the lines for each shape. Getting the sticker off of the sticker sheet and then placing it onto the sheet in the proper place can prove to be difficult, especially when the stickers bend and crease. Use stickers that are somewhat larger to help with grasping.
Tweezers, Tongs And Clothespins
Use any of these items to help pick up and sort different items such as candy, buttons or pom poms. Sort these items by color into various containers. This helps not only with fine motor skills, but with colors and sorting as well.
Playdough
Have some fun with playdough, allowing your child to build and create anything they want. Teach your child to use various items to create shapes, to cut the playdough, and to make impressions into the dough. Also show your child how to roll the dough on a solid surface or in between their hands to create a cylinder shape or a ball.
Cutting With Scissors
Allow your child to use scissors to cut paper either just cutting paper any way they want, or by following lines. If following lines, keep things simple to start. Draw some wavy lines, or a repeated V shape, and have your child cut on these lines. When this becomes easier, have your child cut out various pictures that requires turning the paper more.
Strengthening your child's fine motor skills is something that will be done at preschool, but these are things you can also do at home to help teach your child. Strengthen these skills and have fun doing these activities with your child.
Reach out to a center like Advantage Learning Center for more ideas.
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