Developing Fine Motor Skills using objects at home!

Throughout my years of teaching I have always seen how important good fine motor skills are for young children. If children practice using these skills, the muscles in their hands will develop so they can use a knife and fork, a pencil, a paint brush, a rolling pin, put Lego bricks together, play with action figures and so many other tools they will use throughout their life.

I love to find new ways to improve these skills – usually browsing Pinterest when Steve is watching something I’m not interested in! I also like to find activities that don’t need many items to use – especially if it’s things that are around the house!

I’ve just made some new activities for my class and thought I’d share the ideas with you as they’re made up from things I have had at home and are simple to make/use and should keep your little one quiet for a few minutes at least!

Cheerios

You can thread these onto pipe cleaners, shoe laces and even strands of spaghetti! Pop your little one in their high chair or at the table and use some play dough or blue tac to keep the spaghetti upright.

You can take this further by asking you little one to put a specific number on, how many have they put on so far or counting how many they can fit on one piece. You could start to make a counting pattern by having a pipe cleaners/ strands of spaghetti and put a number next to each one to highlight how many you want on each.

Straws

Plain old drinking straws are fantastic to help little ones with their fine motor skills.

Give your little one a cutlery drainer (as in picture) or a colander with straws threaded through the holes. Can they pull them out? Can they thread them back in? This can also be done with pipe cleaners.

Cut up your straws and ask your little one to thread them onto pipe cleaners or shoe laces. Again, you can take it further by asking them simple questions or getting them to make patterns if you have coloured straws. You can do this activity with penne pasta and make it interesting by painting it first (with your little one helping of course!)

My little girl, Amelia, has enjoyed helping me set these up and playing with them during class. She would rather play with these types of activities than actual toys at the moment!

Hope you have as much fun with these activities as we have so far! Let me know if you think of any other variations!

Catherine x

Little Learners Doncaster Messy Play