Hands-on Activities for Fine Motor Skills Development

Fine motor skills, in comparison with gross motor skills, involve the small muscles of the body. They enable such functions as writing, grasping small objects, and fastening clothing. These skills are important in most school activities as well as in life in general. Weaknesses in fine motor skills can affect a child’s ability to eat, write legibly, use a computer, turn pages in a book, and perform personal care tasks such as dressing and grooming.

So, the development of fine motor skills seems to be an important issue in child-raising. Properly developed fine motor skills will help kids better grasp the essence of writing and drawing. Then, there’s also a huge advantage for parents if kids’ fine motor skills are developed. What advantage? Kids dress, fasten their laces, and brush their hair all by themselves!

Aware of this child development aspect, let’s list some activities we can undertake to help our children develop their fine motor skills.

• Drawing (you can use a variety of writing instruments here)
• Painting (even finger painting!)
• Picking small items (ex. picking buttons of the same color)
• Putting small items in containers according to their color, shape, or size
• Beading
• Pinning toy clothes
• Cutting
• Putting stickers
• Taking something with tweezers
• Picking something or eating with chopsticks
• Coloring objects
• Modeling things with dough,  plasticine, or clay
• Weaving
• Spooning marbles
• Painting with a sponge
• Candy sorting

Have fun and add more activities on our Facebook page!