Do the letters your child writes look like squiggles? Do they know how to hold their pencil correctly?
I will help you determine what to do if your child struggles with handwriting.
No matter if neurotypical or with special needs, some children find learning to write tricky.
It is a significant skill to master, and lots of practice is needed. They can achieve it with the help of fine motor skills.
Read on to find out what fine motor skills are and why they are important. I will also share 50 (yes, fifty!) ideas for fine motor skills activities.
What are the Fine Motor Skills?
Fine motor skills are developed when small muscles that are in the hands (and arms, shoulders, and other body parts) work together with the brain and the nervous system. This teamwork allows controlling movements of hands and fingers (and lips, eyes, and tongue).
Some studies show that fine motor skills link to cognitive abilities and to developing of attention. Think about all those movements, actions, and sequences that need to be coordinated- it might be a big challenge for your little one. Think also about hand-eye coordination involved in your daily activities: cooking, driving, or typing.
Your child is not born able to walk or talk- the same with writing, getting dressed, manipulating objects, holding things, or feeding yourself. Fine motor skills are needed first.
Holding a pen, pulling a zip, using scissors, or holding a spoon- all require fine motor skills.
Why are they important?
Fine motor skills help to develop hand-eye coordination. They also help to develop precision, dexterity (skill in performing tasks, especially with the hands), and coordination of the hands.
Your child might struggle with writing because their fine motor skills are not developed well.
Holding objects, bending fingers, moving the wrist, and more is what goes into writing.
More about Fine Motor Skills
Before moving on to developing fine motor skills, babies (or older children in case of developmental delays) explore their surroundings: different textures, materials, and surfaces. It is called sensory exploration.
They can then slowly gain more skills with your help.
As you will see below in my list of 50 fine motor skills developing activities, many of them do not require expensive resources and are straightforward and can be incorporated into your daily routine or used whenever your little one is bored. It’s a win-win.
Not only will they keep them occupied and happy exploring, but also they will help to develop your child’s fine motor skills and get them ready for future writing.
What does your child need to start writing?
To be ready for writing, your little one needs:
Shoulder strength
It is a base of support for their hands’ functions. Strong arms will help your child’s hands to do the job.
You can help them strengthen their arms by letting them climb, crawl, push and pull (these are gross motor skills) and develop good upper body strength.
Grasp
To be able to write, your child needs to learn to hold the tool (a pencil or a pen, or a crayon)
Their grasp needs to be strong enough to hold a pen but still flexible so it can move across the paper.
Forearm and wrist control
To start writing, your little one should be able to swivel the forearm so the palm is up and down. They also need to hold the wrist firm while moving fingers.
Bilateral hand use
Their two hands need to work together. One is usually the dominant one, and the other is the “helper”. So, when writing, one hand is holding the paper while the other is writing.
Eye-hand coordination
Hands and vision should be coordinated, with the eyes simultaneously following the hand movements.
How can you help?
Fine motor skills can be developed over time.
For children who, for various reasons, struggle more, it will require lots of repetition and consistency.
Depending on your child’s needs and the stage of their development, it might take longer but don’t give up.
Check out these 50 activities.
They are ideas of how to help your little one develop their fine motor skills.
They are easy and straightforward, and most of them can be done with the things you have at home already.
Although they might keep your little ones occupied and busy, always supervise your child.
You can “level up” the game by commenting as they do the activities.
This will help widen their vocabulary and may help not only those who struggle with speech and language.
A simple way to do that is to “narrate” what they are doing, for example: “ You are rolling a snake”.
50 Fine Motor Skills activities :
Below you can find 50 ideas for activities to do with your child.
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- Playing with small world objects: small animals, figurines, tiny toys
- Opening and closing plastic bottles and containers with lids
- Helping with cooking (with supervision: stirring, mixing, chopping)
- Stirring the magic potion (gather leaves, pebbles, and grass to make it)
- Stickers (sticking and peeling off)
- Playing with stamps
- Making paper chains
- Playing with and undoing a Velcro
- Drawing or painting on paper stuck on the floor
- Playing with oats, rice, small pasta, or couscous
- Walking like animals
- Squeezing a sponge
- Cutting off pieces of straw
- Cutting out shapes or pictures or cutting along the lines
- Pegging the washing on the line
- Forming numbers or letters with pompons or pasta
- Tearing paper
- Making shapes with yarn or wires
- Cookie cutting and decorating (These cookie cutters are nice)
- Seed arts
- Playing with finger puppets
- Pinching pompons with a peg
- Drawing inside a big box that children can fit into
- Dressing dolls
- Making fruit kebabs (skewers have sharp ends- always supervise your child)
- Threading ribbon through an opening in a box or a coffee tin
- Making shapes with your body (lines, circles, triangles, etc.)
- Poking a pompon with a toothpick
- Picking the kennels of a corn
- Making paper clips chains or shower ring chains
- Picking up small objects with tongs, tweezers, or pegs
- Playdoh (squashing, stretching, rolling, pinching, making a ball, snipping off little pieces, making snakes or rainbows, cutting out shapes with a cookie cutter or pressing straws, googly eyes, feathers, or shells into it) This playdoh set is nice
- Helping with gardening (planting, watering, handling gardening tools with supervision)
- Playing with stretchy fabric
- Finger painting
- Poking a toothpick into playdough
- Making cheerios or pasta necklaces
- Clipping pegs onto leaves on a tree
- Completing a jigsaw puzzle made from your child’s photo cut into pieces
- Playing with nuts, bolts, and screws
- Drawing lines with chalk and covering them with rocks or conkers (horse chestnuts)
- Playing with wind-up toys
- Putting coins into a piggy bank
- Tying knots
- Painting with cotton buds (Q-tips)
- Pushing pipe cleaners into a colander
- “Painting” a wall or a fence with water
- Dropping pompons into an empty bottle
- Weaving thread or yarn around a cardboard cut-out
Give them a try, and let me know in the comments which one is your favourite!
