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Home | Store | Forum | What's New | Contact | About | Terms | Links | Storytime | UNCRC Articles for children's care, learning and development. 100 fine motor skills activities that help younger toddler and preschool aged children to exercise their fingers, hands, wrists, and arms, important aspects of their blossoming physical development as they grow to discover the usefulness of controlling tools such as scissors, pencils, paintbrushes, and books. The pincer grip comes early, this skill being mastered at around 2 years old when it's expected children will be able to pick up 'tiny objects using a fine pincer grip' (p.57 Cache 2011) and then the dynamic tripod grip at about 3 years old. This close, triple digit positioning brings together the thumb and first two fingers in a pressured clasp that is required to hold a pen's nib firmly enough to a sheet of paper that it makes a visible mark, this involves a mighty precision that can be quite tiring for little hands and indeed challenging without many repeated opportunities for the child to strengthen the muscular movements that enable the continuous act of clenching. The following collection of open-ended ideas provides children's smaller muscles with those necessary work outs, improving their dexterity and refining their hand-eye coordination, and with learning being much more fun when a project follows their individual, personal interests you'll find the motivation to be involved is far greater when there's a sense of connection with what's already happening or about to happen. Most of the skill promoting activities here are easy to set up and equally important, they adapt! So please always feel confident that by substituting these suggestions for your own resources you know that the range of developmental and learning benefits that are being supported is vast! Planning ahead can help to take the pressure off of needing spontaneous ideas and if that's a frequent situation you find yourself in, it's possible considering 'sensory', then 'creative' can be helpful in identifying any suitable loose parts the setting may have. Invite the children to use these bits and pieces freely, constructing, sprinkling, mark-making and personalising whatever their imagination and curiosity are driving. The following group of links are to activity pages on silkysteps    Fit elastic bands on a shoebox guitar  Peel paper off of paint bubbles and marbling inks   Add beads to a rainmaker tube  Take coins out of a purse to pay    Hang decorations on tree branches    Pick daisies from the lawn  or blackberries from a thornless tangle!  Finger paint on paper and windows  Build a tower, stack blocks and balance balls of dough  Squeeee...eze foam stress balls  Face paint a friend  Pick up chocolate buttons, yum  Use cutlery - knives forks spoons  Roleplay with small world animals  Turn the pages of a book  Post shapes through a hole  'write' a postcard to a parent or a friend  Paint with brushes  Drizzle glue from a stick  Drizzle glue from a sqeezy bottle  Sprinkle glitter Use scissors to cut:  sheets of paper,  paper straws,  playdough, string, yarn, rafia, curling ribbon   Draw with chalk  Remove a bottle lid and put it back on     Throw and catch balls  Drive small cars with fingers  Stained glass windows - tissue glued on laminated pouches  Hold bubble blowing wands - bubble recipe  Hang name tags on coat hooks  Sewing dragonfly wing veins  Pick and collage sycamore seeds  Insert keys to release locks - log locks  Push frozen paint cubes around paper    Weave grass on orbs  Peel paper off of painted bubble wrap  Playing musical instruments like the triangle The following group of links are to amazon.co.uk  Threading buttons, cotton reels and cards  Spray bottles with trigger handles    Use peg boards  Secure jewellery  Push up wooden toys  Play with puppets  Pick paper clips from a magnetic wand  Pick up pieces of fruit and vegetables to eat  Sow seeds   Trace a line in sand  Make handprints with paint  Fold a sheet of paper in half and then quaters  Use paper punches to cut out shapes  Stand dominoes up in a row  Cut velcro fruit ad vegetables in half  Snap together magnetic sticks and balls  Lock in a sequence of gears  Pour water from teapots into teacups  Press keys on a keyboard  Sort bears into coloured pots  Set a spinning wheel spinning! fidget spinner  Thread beads onto bendy straws  Hang clothes on a line with pegs  Use bladder pumps or pipettes to suck up water  Play lotto    Brush teeth with toothpaste  Loosen and tighten nuts and bolts  Ring bells  Collect aqua water beads and put them in a jar  Match and sort puzzes    Click together linking rings  Hide objects inside opening eggs and blocks  Enjoy finger rhymes  Enjoy the Finger Gym programme  Turn the hands on  a clock  Use ink stamps and a priming pad   Fly kites  Water squirters  Use fingertips to touch, your nose, eyes, cheeks, mouth, ears, forehead, hair  Press the buttons on a remote control  Take a photo with a camera  Use fingertips to touch, your nose, eyes, cheeks, mouth, ears, forehead, hair    Weigh items on scales  Take crayon rubbings from stencils and tree bark  Build with interlocking bricks - duplo, hexagons, mathlinks  Disconnect hooks and latches  Jigsaw puzzles  Play marble run    Play fuzzy felt  Tap nails into wood or golf tees into pumpkins  Play with matryoshka nesting dolls  Use sugar tongs or EYs tweezers to transfer a bowl of  floating pom poms  Assemble 3D wooden puzzles  Hook plastic ducks from a a pond  Pull spikes from a rocket or swords from a pirate!  Use paint dabbers    Positioning stickers  Manually handwhisk soapy water  Scratch art sheets    Use chalk pens on a balckboard The following group of links are to playdough-activities.com  Thread yarn through balls of playdough - spider roleplay  Roll dice  - raindrop and umbrellas game  Stamp impressions into the surface of playdough    Thread pony beads onto matchsticks - easter pinwheels  Push dough into extruders  Push diodes into dough to make a circuit  Push craft stems into playdough or clay  Balance marbles on blunt golf tees