Fine motor play is so important to us and in the activities that we play. As an occupational therapist, my kids are exposed to fine motor activities from a very young age…it’s part of being an OT, I guess 😉 This past year, we’ve had so much fun with play. We’ve been loving looking back over this year’s favorite activities. We went through our favorite fine motor activities from 2013 and pulled out the MOST popular according to you guys! We’ve put together Fine Motor Activity posts together in the past, but this one is the best of this past year’s play and fun. Our little blog has been live on the internet for our first full year now and WOW, we’ve had so much fun, growth, and knowledge! We love having a place to look back over our year and remember the fun, learning, and joy we’ve had with our kids as they play and grow!
Top Fine Motor Play Activities for Kids
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In-Hand manipulation play for fine motor skills: We had so much fun with water beads. This post shares two ideas for improving in-hand manipulation skills which are so important for dexterity in self-care, handwriting, coin manipulation…and so much more!
Our Fine Motor Play using Pipe Cleaners post was great for Toddlers. Two of the cousins had a blast with this one, while working on their fine motor dexterity, eye-hand coordination, tip-to-tip grasp, and tripod grasp…all with a recycled box and a handful of pipe cleaners.
Fine Motor Play with Tissue Paper was a fan favorite of the toddlers, preschoolers, and their Occupational Therapist Mom! This was such an easy activity to set up and really worked on development of the arches of their hands, finger isolation, and even had an auditory feedback component. This one will be making a come-back in our daily play, soon!
This Fine Motor and Auditory Fire Works activity required very little set-up or clean-up. Not only did it work on fine motor skills with a Fourth of July fireworks theme…it was really fun, too! We are big fans of bubble wrap, so this post definitely makes our Best Of list!
Fine Motor Table-Top Play came about one morning when a bunch of the cousins were picking on each other. A roll of masking tape saved the day…and prevented any more fights! This activity was appropriate for all stages…toddlers, preschool, and kindergarten age.
Finger isolation, tripod grasp, eye-hand coordination, bilateral hand coordination…Fine Motor Play with Crafting Pom Poms has got it all! We even worked on color identification and sorting with this easy fine motor play activity.
We love creating crafts and activities from recycled and re-pourposed materials. This DIY Lacing Cards from Carry Out Containers post definitely makes our Best Of post for fine motor skills. Lacing is such a great way to develop and refine many beginner dexterity skills. Tripod grasp, bilateral hand coordination, eye-hand coordination, and visual-motor skills are all addressed!
Baby Girl was only 16 months old when she played with this Pipe Cleaner Fun activity. (Looking back at all of these posts from 2013 is really making me tear up, here! They grow tooooo fast!) She loved manipulating pipe cleaners into a plastic bottle while working on eye-hand coordination, grasp and dexterity, with a little auditory feed back from the empty plastic bottle. Older children can work on colors and sorting with an activity like this one.
This Fine Motor Strengthening Color Match activity was a fun fine motor activity and really worked on the intrinsic muscle strength of little hands. We added a little handwriting and color sorting in this activity too, perfect for multi-level learning!
We played with this Fine Motor Pincer Grasp Color Match activity with play dough and beads to match. The toddler cousins LOVED this activity. And I loved it because it not only kept them busy, it really worked those fine motor skills. They worked on their fine motor skills and color matching at the same time.
in the baggie and another good shake, and we were ready to play. I added a couple of drops of extract to the un-dyed noodles too…these sensory noodles smelled so good!
