Developing fine motor skills is one of the goals of many of our activities here at our learning center. Fine motor skills refer to the connection between small muscles — like those in the hand — and the eyes. These skills are vital to learning things like how to write, hold small objects, and more! Weakness in fine motor skills can slow a child’s development as well as affect many parts of their daily life, like eating, dressing, and brushing their teeth.

If your child has fine motor skills weakness, there are plenty of activities that you can do at home to help! Many toys help to develop fine motor skills, and there are developmentally appropriate toys for infants all the way up to school-aged children. In today’s blog we’ll be sharing a few activities that help develop fine motor skills. There are plenty of easy ways to strengthen these small muscles and to practice hand-eye coordination. Continue reading to learn more and if you’d like to schedule a tour of a Kids Villa Learning Center, contact us in Germantown, Urbana, or Waring Station Road today! We’d be more than happy to talk about the activities we do with the children in our learning center every single day to help develop fine motor skills and other learning goals.

Play Dough

Playing with play dough is a great way to engage children’s senses while helping them develop fine motor skills. Squeezing the dough strengthens their hand muscles and rolling, twisting, and building with the dough gives them a way to express their creativity! There are so many benefits to this simple toy and it’s very inexpensive. You can even make some yourself at home!

Threading Beads

Depending on the developmental stage of your child, you can try threading beads of various sizes on strings of different lengths. A great way to help young children practice this skill is using a pipe cleaner to thread the beads onto. The stiffness of the pipe cleaner helps the child be successful in this activity.

Colanders

When you’re thinking of activities to develop fine motor skills, think about various ways to poke or thread. A colander is an easy household object to turn into a toy. Just give your child a couple pipecleaners and have them decorate the colander by poking the pipe cleaners through the holes.

Drawing and Coloring

Here at our learning center, children draw and color every single day! Not only is it a great form of self expression, it is also one of the easiest ways to develop fine motor skills. One of the most important fine motor skills your child will develop is learning to hold a pencil and write. Depending on the age of your child and their developmental stage, you can use crayons and markers of different diameters. As the muscles in their hands get stronger and more dexterous, they’ll be able to grasp smaller objects.

Kids Villa Learning Center

Our learning centers are focused on helping children grow at their own pace. Every child learns differently, and that includes learning fine motor skills! We offer full-day childcare, as well as before and after-school programming for school-age children. If you’re looking for a safe, supportive, and nurturing space for your child, contact our learning center today! We also offer summer programming for year-round childcare services!

Schedule a tour at one of our three daycare center locations: