Activities You Can Do At Home To Improve Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills are an important part of your child's growth. In addition to gross motor skills, those fine motor skills will help grip, grasp and with picking things up. They will help later down the road with tying shoes, holding a pencil, and performing scissor work. To help improve your child's fine motor skills, there are activities you can do at home. Read on for a few fun activities.

Pom-Pom Sorting

Use different color pieces of construction paper cut into different shapes (just to make it more fun), then use different color pom-poms mixed into a bowl. Have your child use tongs to pick up the pom-poms and place them onto the matching color construction paper. To turn this fine motor skill into more of a learning activity, you can talk to your child about the different colors and shapes as well. Be sure your child is picking up the pom-poms one at a time and use larger pom-poms to make it a little easier. If you don't have pom-poms, you can use wooden blocks or Lego pieces as well.

Threading

Using a shoelace and wooden beads, have your child thread the beads onto the shoelace. If you don't have wooden beads, use a shoelace and a piece of thick paper (or cardboard) with holes in it. Have your child thread the shoelace through the holes, weaving it in and out. You can also do this with a cardboard tube (such as an empty paper towel roll) and pipe cleaners. Have your child push the pipe cleaners through the holes. Then when they are full of pipe cleaners, have your child pull the pipe cleaners out.

Play Dough Play

Have your child take some play dough and roll it into a ball using their hands. After they can create a ball, have your child roll it onto the table to create a long snake. Give your child more play dough to play with and create their own play dough masterpiece. Give your child small cups, cookie cutters, or play dough toys to make their own creations.

You use fine motor skills every day, and they are a very important part of your child's growth and learning. Improve their fine motor skills at home by using the activities above. Talk to an occupational therapist, from a clinic such as Your Therapy Source, about other ways to help improve your child's fine motor skills.