In our latest blog, we examined research about the importance of cultivating young children's fine motor muscles. Indeed, when families ask me what they can do at home to support their children's academic success, fine motor activities tops my list.
*An asterisk denotes activities with a clear visual-spatial component. As you might remember from our previous blog, tasks demanding fine motor skills and visual-spatial reasoning correlated more strongly with later academic achievement than those demanding only fine motor strength.
Below, find a few examples of fine motor activities to try at home with your child:
-Make homemade playdough together for children to play with
-Tonging or transferring with a dropper*
-Peeling a clementine
-Juicing a lemon or orange
-Chopping vegetables- We use this specialized knife in the classroom.*
-Painting with watercolors*
-Hole punching- Simply hand your child a hole punch and a few colorful papers.
-Clipping clothespins*- This can be as easy as placing a handful of clothespins in a bucket. Demonstrate how to clip the clothespins on the edge of the bucket. Once all the clips have been placed, remove them and place them back in the bucket. Repeat!
-Pouring*
Are there other fine motor activities that you enjoy doing with children? Add them to the comments!