Fine motor activities help to gain strength and coordination that can lead to success in dressing, eating, and other daily activities. - Dressing Activities
- Dressing a doll
- Tying a shoe
- Practice buttoning and zipping
- Kitchen Activities
- Folding napkins or laundry
- Whipping up instant pudding or mashed potatoes with a spoon
- Opening jars of peanut butter or jelly, milk/pop bottle cap
- Cutting small marshmallows in half. Turn the sticky side down and press onto a heart design, a circle design, onto the letters of the child's name, or any design
- Making macaroni mosaic - glue different size/shape dry macaroni or noodles on paper to make pictures
- Household Activities
- Tearing newspaper into stripes and then crumpling them into balls to be used to stuff a scarecrow or other art creation
- Scrunching up 1 sheet of newspaper in 1 hand - great strength builder
- Turning over cards, coins, checkers, or buttons - without bringing them to the edge of the table
- Using eye droppers to "pick up" colored water for color mixing or to make artistic designs on paper
- Making a caterpillar out of an egg carton:
- Use pipe cleaner for legs and antennae
- Let the child try to punch holes for the legs and antennae with a hold punch for grip strength - encourage the child to try it on their own and use hand over hand assistance if they need help
- Have the child glue small beads on for eyes and nose or color them on
- Indoor Activities
- Playing games with the "puppet fingers" - the thumb, index, and middle fingers - or playing finger play games like Itsy Bitsy Spider or Where is Thumpin
- Playing with containers - find containers to open: Cool Whip bowls, film containers, lunch boxes with the old fashioned metal buckles, and containers with snaps on the lid, flip lids, or a small screw on the lid. Hide toys in the containers or place containers inside each other with the smallest container having a small piece of candy, a surprise note or toy in it - Good for finger manipulation
- Playing with a lite bright - use your own design or have the child make random designs
- Making pictures using stickers or self-sticking paper reinforcements
- Coloring books
- Using stencils or cut out shapes to make pictures
- Punching holes with a hole puncher around a shape or chard - then have the child weave yarn in and out of the holes
- Stamping
- Using small stickers or foam stickers
- Sponge painting
- Painting at an ease
- Outdoor Activities
- Using a spray bottle to spray paint
- Spray snow - mix food coloring with water so that the snow can be painted
- Melt "monsters" - draw monster pictures with markers and the colors will run when sprayed
- Make "butterflies" - spray colors on coffee filters
- Using sidewalk chalk
- Sorting Activities
- Have the child remove lids of canning jars and sort objects according to color, size, etc, then screw the lid back on
- Hook plastic shower curtain rings together, then unhook rings and place in a container
- Play with wind up toys
- Go rock picking - sort rocks by color, shape, size, or crystals - this works the fine motor pinch as well as the visual system to pick out similar items in a crowded area
- Writing Skills
- Writing a child's name - have the child make a glue line over the letters then place beads, candy pieces, or dried beans on the glue line
- For higher difficulty, take a bead necklace and have the child cut the beads off the necklace then use a tweezers or tongs to pick up the beads and place on the glue line
- Drawing shapes/letters/pictures on different textures - sacks, newspaper, aluminum foil, construction paper
- Finger tracing letters in sand, pudding, shaving cream, or in the air
- Attach a large piece of drawing paper to a wall, have the child draw a lazy 8 (figure 8 sideways) with a large marker then practice the following exercises to develop visual motor skills along with fine motor skills - trace the figure 10 times, left to right, from top to bottom - also encourages crossing midline
- Playing connect the dots - encourage the child to connect the dots from left to right and from top to bottom
- Tracing around stencils - have the child firmly hold the stencil against the paper with their non-dominant hand while their dominant hand pushes the pencil against the edge of the stencil
- Using chalk on a chalkboard - chalk has more sensory input through the noise it makes and is more tactile resistive than a marker on a white board
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