Fine Motor Skills

Fine Motor Activities For Development

52 Fine Motor Development Skills and Activities for Kids Why are fine motor skills are so important when it come to a child’s development? When a pre k child or young child engages in an activity which encourages the use of their fine motor abilities, they are utilizing their brain, hands, and eyes to develop hand-eye coordination to help them manipulate objects. This is very important for learning self-help skills, becoming ready for many academic tasks in the future, as well as becoming proficient in writing skills. It is a good idea to provide a variety of fine motor skills and fine motor activities for children to practice. Some motor activities may require more effort on the part of some pre k children, where other fine motor activities can be mastered with only minimal effort, but they are all important in the growth and development of young children during their early years. Below are 52 fine motor activities to keep you going for the entire year, plus 6 bonus activities to mix things up when you need it. These activities are a combination of art materials, manipulative toys, and more to give the preschoolers and young children a variety of fine motor activities at various difficulty levels.You can use these fine motor activities however you like with the pre k children in your care. We recommend providing one fine motor skills activity per week so preschoolers & toddlers have time to master that skill. Some pre k children and toddlers may need longer, some children may need less time. It is important to make sure each child gets the time they need to practice before moving onto the next activity. If you feel some preschoolers or young children are ready to move on but some need a bit more time, you can have both fine motor skills activities out at the same time. 52 Fine Motor Activities for the Classroom (plus 6 bonus activities) Molding and rolling play dough into large round balls using the palms of hands. Using large tweezers to pick up various sized objects (pom poms, cotton balls, etc.) Providing finger puppets for playing games or action songs. Placing a hole punch on the art shelf with construction paper. Using chop-sticks to pick up small objects. (The children don’t have to master the proper use of the chopsticks but the practice is great for fine motor development.) Create a make-shift clothes line and have the children use clothes pegs to hang up dolls clothing and blankets. Cutting a variety of paper using child safe scissors. (Calendars, card stock, construction paper, magazines paper, etc.) Stretching rubber bands around different sized bottles and containers. Put objects in a bowl and have the children move the objects to another bowl using a spoon. Stringing beads on shoelaces, string, or pipe cleaners. Using different sized chalk on chalk boards or construction paper. Ripping up news paper into pieces. Crumple up the pieces into balls. Using stickers or self sticking shapes in the art […]

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Cutting and Pasting Food Recognition Activity

Cutting and Pasting Activity for Fine Motor Skills Emotional Development for Preschoolers Preschool aged children benefit greatly from learning activities like cutting and pasting activities like those below, which help in the development of fine motor skills and emotional development. Preschoolers and young children are fascinated by different varieties of food and they of course, like adults, have their favorite foods, drinks, snacks and treats. Why not turn that into a fun cutting and pasting activity for fine motor skills development? But how? Check out this simple, fun activity that will help familiarize pre k children with different types of food & snacks, all while developing their fine motor skills using scissors, cutting and pasting and simple identification. Cutting & Pasting for Food Recognition: Flyers, old magazines, newspapers and calendars are great places to find numerous pictures and images of meats, fruits, vegetables, desserts, candy, cereals and more to use for this kids activity. Using these old newspapers and magazines is also great for the environment. It’s always a good idea to use old materials like these for images and information which you can use to make your preschool tools and activities. Recycling is always a good idea and it teaches the children good habits. What You Want to Do for this Preschool Activity: Provide child scissors (yes – the ones specifically for children. They should be labeled as such and usually have rounded ends and fit a child’s small fingers) What you want to do is get an assortment of different flyers, magazines and newspapers full of different images of various food types.   Different Options for this Fine Motor Skills Development Activity for Children For this kids fine motor skills and emotional development activity, you could have the children search through flyers and newspapers and find food, drinks, and snacks that they like. Or to make it a little more challenging you could have them find ONLY the ‘meat’ products. Or Find only the ‘vegetables’ etc. When the children are searching for their own personal favorites, this helps with their ‘emotional development’ and also builds ‘food recognition skills’. The cutting, using child safe scissors, helps children to build fine motor skills which includes the building of the small muscles of the hands and fingers in children.   Obviously there are different ways that this activity can be done or even expanded on. You could even pick different ways for different children. When finished, you can keep all the food images that have been cut out and paste them on a sheet of paper and have the sheet laminated. Once laminated, you can then cut the images out again and use them for various learning and teaching activities in the preschool classroom or at home with your kids. You could even allow the children to paste the images and make a collage of their favorite foods, favorite vegetables etc. on a paper plate. This pasting and sticking also helps with fine motor development of the children’s small muscles of the fingers

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