Fine Motor Coordination Activities

Fine motor skills are often times, the culprit behind problems you see in the classroom or at home. From opening a food container, to managing buttons on a jacket, to managing legos when playing, to tying shoes in the third grade, to keeping up with peers when writing with a pencil…fine motor skills play a huge part in the life of a child!  It can be overwhelming to work on all of the specific areas that make up fine motor skills.  And to be honest, it’s really not efficient to isolate particular fine motor skills when they all work together to manipulate and move items functionally.


These fine motor coordination activities are perfect for developing a variety of specific fine motor skills in a coordinated manner.  In fact, all of these activities develop and strengthen several specific fine motor skills.  Use these activities as your “go-to” ideas for play and development when kids need to work on several fine motor areas.

Try these fine motor coordination activities to help build the skills needed for school tasks like handwriting.


Fine Motor Coordination Activities



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Try these activities to aid in development and coordination of fine motor skills:


  • Sort small objects such as screws, bolts, and paper clips into groups.
  • Use a water sprayer to mist water at paper, newspaper, or plants.
  • Crumble paper into small pieces.  Try other ways to build fine motor skills with paper too: fold, cut, color, and tear paper.
  • Use a hole puncher to punch holes.  
  • Tong activities.  Use them to move cotton balls or crafting pom poms.
  • Open and seal shut plastic sandwich bags.  Use them to store fine motor play items and have the child get them out and put them away.  
  • Do you have a set of jacks?  Press them into play dough for a resistive activity.  Then, pull the play dough from the jacks.  



Children accomplish so much throughout their day in play and at school as a result of proficiency in fine motor skills.  What are your favorite ways to encourage fine motor coordination?

Fine motor coordination activities with everyday items are fun for kids.



Looking to work on specific fine motor skills?  Try these: