I love to add a fine motor spin to learning activities. When it comes to teaching kids to write letters, knowing correct formation (and the order of making lines in writing a letter) is so important for handwriting legibility and eventually speed of written work.
This fine motor peg board activity incorporates eye-hand coordination and tripod grasp to manipulate pegs in order to build letter formation skills, and using a dice, which adds a power in-hand manipulation component to the activity…with a bit of fun mixed in. Overall, this was a fun activity that all four of my kiddos loved!
Fine Motor Alphabet Letter Formation Activity with Dice and a Peg Board
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To make the letters in this activity, I pulled out one of may favorite tools from my Occupational Therapy bag: My trusty pegboard and small pegs. The pegs are small enough to encourage a tripod grasp allow for in-hand manipulation, and removing the pegs works on intrinsic strength and arch development of the hand. We used the pegs and the alphabet dice from our Scattergories game (you can get just the dice here.) to work on forming letters with correct lines.
I had my kids take turns at this activity. They rolled the dice and then used the pegs to form the letters. I gave just a few verbal cues to show them how to make the curved lines of certain letters like “G” or “C”. To make this activity easier, you can draw a letter on a piece of paper that is cut to fit the pegboard. Kids can press the letters through the paper and into the holes of the peg board.
Fine Motor Skills When Playing with a Peg Board
- In hand manipulation
- Tripod Grasp
- Eye Hand Coordination
- Strengthening
- Arch Development
- Open Thumb Web Space
- Thumb IP Joint Flexion
- Thenar Strengthening
- Separation of the Two Sides of the Hand
- Bilateral Coordination
Fine Motor Skills Used When Rolling a Dice
- Arch Development
- In-Hand Manipulation
- Separation of the Two Sides of the Hand
- Hypothenar Musculature Strengthening
- Precision of Grasp and Release
- Finger Isolation
Place Value Game with Dice from Still Playing School
Rainforest Dice Long and Short Vowel Reading Game from Learning 2 Walk
Preschool Rainbow Grid Game from Preschool Powol Packets
Fun Shapes Dice Game for Kids from School Time Snippets
Writing Game Using Dice from Teach me Mommy
Venn Diagram Dice Probability STEM Activity from Schooling a Monkey
Block Stacking Dice Game from Kidz Activities
Simple Addition Dice Game from Powerful Mothering
DIY Dice from Sugar Spice & Glitter
More Fine Motor Activities you will love:
