Y’all. Ruth is turning ONE this weekend. What the heck?!?! Where has this whole year gone? We’re celebrating with our families and doing a simple backyard cookout. I’m really looking forward to a fun evening celebrating our curious, independent, determined, and sweet little girl!
Amidst the party planning, I have come up with some excellent fine-motor activities to share with you today!
Again, quickly. Here you can fine some easy-to-peruse facts about the importance of fine-motor skills. Prior to today’s post, I’ve share the “why” behind this series, activities involving buttons and bands, and activities combining fine-motor skills and creativity.
This week is all about activities requiring squeezes and pinches to build up that hand strength and control.
Clothespins: There are so many great options for using (cheap!) clothespins! And so many ways to use them to practice other, academic skills as well. I’m just going to list a few ideas I’ve found:
STEM ALERT: Give kids a bunch of clothespins and popsicle sticks and watch them build! Building these beginning engineering skills (the E in STEM) gets students’ brains thinking critically, but they think it’s just all fun and games! How high can they build a tower?
Alphabet and Number Plates: Have students practice letter/number matching by writing letters or dots around a paper plate and corresponding letters and numbers on clothespins. Easy peasy!
Spelling Practice: Print out cards (you can set your printer to index card size and print right on those bad boys!) of spelling words or sight words (or write them on popsicle sticks) and write the letters to each word on clothespins. Students clip the pins onto each card to practice spelling the words. Make it more challenging by leaving a letter or two out of the word on the card and make students fill it in!
Pom-Pom Races: Grab some turkey basters and pom-poms (or cotton balls) from the dollar store. Squeeze the turkey baster and use the force from the air to push the pom pom from a starting point to an ending point. That’s a challenge in and of itself, but make it a race for some added fun! If students are having trouble, create a path for the pom-poms by cutting paper towel tubes lengthwise.
Pinchers, Tweezers, or Clips: Give students something to pinch with and tiny things to grab (beads, seeds, beans, pom poms, etc.).
Race to 100 by giving students a dice and number grid, having students roll the dice and add that number of “things” onto the grid. Players could take turns and the first to 100 is the winner!
Pincher Checkers: Teach kids to play the game of checkers, but require them to use their tongs/pinchers to move their pieces (anything they can pick up with the pinchers) from one space to the next. This not only builds the fine-motor skills but also allows for kids to interact and strategize.
Spray Bottle Magic Art: Fill a spray bottle with a bit of paint and a lot of water. Have students write sight words or sentences with a white crayon onto a white piece of paper. Students then spray the paper with the watered down paint and their words will magically appear! If you don’t want to manage paint being sprayed out of bottles (I’m still thinking through that piece of this!) then put some water (or water with some vinegar) in a bottle and let the kids clean the room!
Water Dropper: Challenge students to predict and then experiment to find out exactly how many drops of water can fit on a penny. Students can also predict and discover how many water drops it takes to fill a bottle cap, and can experiment with different sizes of caps to practice some concepts of volume.
I hope you enjoyed these activities! Please share with your parent and teacher friends because sharing is caring, remember?!
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