What are Fine Motor Skills?
Fine motor skills involve the use of the small muscles in your hands working together to create small but complex movements. A combination of strength and coordination is needed to complete these important movements. Fine motor skills are needed for many everyday life activities like writing, buttoning a shirt, holding utensils, and turning doorknobs, just to name a few.
Developing Fine Motor Skills
Children start developing fine motor skills not long after they are born. Activities like holding a rattle and grabbing at toys are early fine motor skill activities. As students get older they need lots of activities that use their hand muscles in order to build the strength needed for fine motor activities. As teachers, we need to give our students a hand workout each and every day to build up these important muscles.
Don’t worry, developing fine motor skills doesn’t need another block of time in the day. Instead, be intentional as you plan classroom centers and activities and you will be able to easily incorporate fine motor development into activities you are already doing.
1. Pinching Skills
There are many ways to work on pinching skills. You can use tweezers, clothes pins, and glue bottles are great ways develop those pincher skills. You may not realize how difficult it is for children to use those pinchers. You will probably have students try to cheat (skipping the tweezers, two hands with clothes pins). I know it is easy to get frustrated when kids cheat, but just remind them the right way to squeeze.
I love this dot-dot not a lot sheet. It is a great way to talk about how much flue to use AND it strengthens students fine motor skills. You can get this FREE here.
2. Playdough
I love play dough. I know it can get messy. I recommend you have students keep it on a tray. These are my favorite tray at Michaels. Be sure to use your teacher discount. Play dough is great for pinching and overall hand strength. I use it during literacy, math, and free play.
3. Tracing Skills
Tracing is a fine motor skill. Tracing shapes, letters, and numbers are all important. Did you notice both my pom-pom and playdough sheets include letter tracing? If you have a student that is struggling, I highly recommend having them trace in the sand. They can trace with their finger to start. Then, transition to a paint brush to practice holding a writing tool correctly. Do you want another tip for writing? When parents send in cheap crayons or pencils, break them so students are forced to hold them correctly.
You can also make glue cards (or if you are really brave, have the students make them). I add glitter to the Elmer’s glue. When it dries, they have something tactile to trace with their finger. This support letter formation, which can help with letter identification and writing.
4. Cutting Skills
Cutting is another important piece of fine. I always take the time to model what to cut and what not to cut (hair, clothes, your neighbor). We also spend a lot of time talking about how to hold scissors, how to cut away from your body, big bites versus small bites, and how to turn your paper as you cut. I like this paper as a great practice page to get a baseline for student cutting skills. Then, I like to incorporate as much cutting as possible throughout the year. I do crafts once a week. I have worksheets for both literacy and math that involve cutting. Cutting strengthens students hands. Get this FREE page HERE.
5. Beading
Do you use beads in your classroom? You can have students build their names or build sight words with their beads. I also love to use beads for math. Have students count out the beads and put them on a pipe cleaner. This is a great way to strengthen hands and get students ready for all kinds on fine motor tasks. You can get these apple numbers FREE HERE. I laminated them and then hot glued them to the pipe cleaner.
Hand strength helps with writing, as well as everyday skills, such buttoning, zipping, and even putting on jackets. Focusing on fine motor skills will help your students with daily life skills.
