Resources for Fine Motor Skills

Fun activities that Improve Fine Motor skills 

Tips: 

• Use small crayon bits, small pieces of chalk and really short pencils during pencil and paper activities. This promotes the correct pencil grasp. Use pencil grips if available
• Use a vertical surface whenever possible (i.e. easel, wall, chalkboard, etc.) 
•  Make it fun and positive! 

1. Pop Beads: Have your child push and pull these together.  Start with larger size, and progress to smaller! 
2. Bead stringing: You can use beads, macaroni, cheerios, buttons, straws, etc. Some good materials to use for the string include yarn, shoe string, or pipe cleaners 
3. Peg Boards: Have your child place small pegs in the peg board to make designs.  
4. Clothespins: Have your child use clothespins to match shapes, colors, letters etc.
5. Card Games: Have your child deal and shuffle cards, helping as needed.  Also ask the child to “fan out” the cards in one hand, if possible.  Flipping the cards over also helps in fine motor development. Examples of card games include: Go Fish, Old Maid, Concentration, Solitaire, Uno etc. 
6. Lacing Cards: Punch holes on paper plates or cardstock to make your own.  Use yarn, twine, or any other available string to lace through the holes. To make the activity more fun for your child, they can draw or glue a picture onto the paper plate/cardstock and lace around it! 
7. Paper crumble: Tear and crumple old paper, newspaper or tissue paper and glue onto a sheet of paper to make a collage picture. Encourage your child to crumble the pieces of paper with one hand only to promote fine finger muscle development. 
8. Bowling: You can use plastic bottles filled with water and a small ball at home. 
9. Activity Books: Mazes, connect-the-dots, tracing, etc.  These help improve eye-hand coordination needed for writing skills! 
10. Paper folding: Japanese origami or make simple hats, fans or boats from newspaper. 
11. Crafts: Cut, glue and paste activities.  
12. Cooking/Baking:  For example: Pour ingredients into cups, Mix ingredients with a spoon or whisk, Using a rolling pin to roll out dough, Kneading dough, Cutting out shapes with a cookie cutter, Placing sprinkles onto cookies. 
13. Self Help Skills: Dress up a favorite doll or stuffed animal, or play “dress up” with costumes or old clothing.  
14. Musical Instruments: xylophones or small pianos are good to help isolation of each finger. 
15. Playdoh, silly putty or modeling clay:  Use cookie cutters on putty, clay or Play-doh, Flatten putty with one hand, Use plastic knife or scissors to cut into pieces, Roll putty with rolling pin, Retrieve small objects, such as beads from putty.
16.  Screwing lids on and off jars: To add interest to screwing lids off, hide small objects or stickers inside for the child to “discover”. 
17. Household tools: Use tongs, large tweezers, clothespins, or anything similar around your home to pick up small objects  
18. Ziploc bags: Store small play objects in Ziploc bags and have your child open and shut the bags. 
19. Sticker Art: Taking stickers off the sheet can be very challenging for some children.  Start with larger stickers, moving to smaller ones as the child develops his skill in removing the stickers. You can make patterns or have the child place the stickers on a sticker book. 
20. Stamping Activity: Try the flexible rubber stamps, sponge stamps and firm stamps making sure the child holds the “top” with the pad of the index finger and thumb. 
21. Dice Activities: Make sure the child “cups” his hand/palm around the dice while shaking it and using one hand only. 
22. Spinning toys: spin tops, twirl markers, etc. 
23. Office tools: Use tools such as hole punchers and staplers to make art projects and patterns. 
24. Dominoes: Line up dominoes on their narrow end in a long line, and then knock the line over for a domino effect! Lining up the dominoes without knocking them over takes a very precise and stable grip
25.  Table top hockey: Set up tape for goals and flick pennies with the thumb, index and middle fingers across the goal line.  Make sure the ring and little fingers stay bent against the palm. 
26. Peeling: paper off crayons, stickers off paper, etc. 
27. Wind up toys 

Toys/Games that Promote Fine Motor and Visual Motor Development 

• Lite Brite 
• Perfection 
• Trouble 
• Card games (eg. Uno, Go Fish) 
• Construction Toys: Legos, Lincoln Logs, etc. 
• Connect Four 
• Checkers 
• Yahtzee 
• Hungry, Hungry Hippos 
• Magna Doodle 
• Pick-up-Stix  
• Ants in the Pants 
• Mancala 
• Chinese Checkers 
• Etch-a-Sketch 
• Zoom ball 
• Putty or clay 
• Musical instruments such as drums, xylophone, keyboard, accordion 
• Puzzles

Online Occupational Therapy Resources 

Fine Motor Apps