Hand Strengthening Activity with an Egg Carton

This hand strengthening activity with an egg carton is an easy way to use a recycled egg carton to work on fine motor skills, hand strength, pincer grasp, tripod grasp development, intrinsic hand strength, eye-hand coordination, and other fine motor hand strength skills.
 

Fine Motor Activity with an Egg Carton

 
Recently, I shared how intrinsic muscle strength benefits handwriting and specifically a functional grasp on the pencil.  Today, I’ve got a super easy way to work on endurance with the lumbrical muscles that are used in maintaining a nice pencil grasp.  
 
This will enable a child to write at appropriate speeds and lengths of time without fatiguing and allow a child to color in a picture without stopping because their hands are tired.
 
The bonus to today’s activity is that the strengthening tool is very easy to re-create and (almost) completely free.
 
This would be an awesome compliment to our recent 31 Days of Occupational Therapy activities using Free or Almost Free Materials!

 

 

 

 

Work on pencil grasp by strengthening the intrinsic muscles of the hands including the lumbricals using a recycled egg carton and straws!

 

Intrinsic Muscles of the Hands Lumbricals Strengthening Exercise

This is a great finger strength exercise…and it only uses an egg carton and straws. The reason it’s such a great strength activity has to do with the lumbrical muscles in the hand.

This post contains affiliate links.
 
For this activity, we used a recycled egg carton, a wooden skewer (Amazon affiliate links), and cut pieces of straws.
 
Use the top of the egg carton and poke holes using the wooden skewer.  Wiggle the skewer until the holes are larger.  Cut the straws into one inch sized pieces, and you are ready to go!

Work on pencil grasp by strengthening the intrinsic muscles of the hands including the lumbricals using a recycled egg carton and straws!

 

Show your kiddo how to poke the straw pieces into the holes.  We used both sides of the egg carton, but using the inside of the egg carton sections especially works on the lumbrical muscles in the hand.  
 
Holding the small straw sections requires a tripod grasp and when the child is required to push the straw through the hole in the section of the egg carton, they are positioning their hand in an Intrinsic Plus Position.  


Ask your child to hold several straw pieces in their hand at once to address in-hand manipulation. This skill is needed to manipulate the pencil and rotate the pencil during handwriting tasks.


We cut off the lid of our egg carton for this activity.  It was a good way to work on bilateral hand coordination which is necessary for holding the paper and pencil with two different hands during a hand writing task. 


Once the straws are partially in the holes of the egg carton, your child can press them the rest of the way through the hole, utilizing finger isolation.  Then, turn the egg carton over and use a tripod grasp to pull the straws the rest of the way through the holes.

 

Work on pencil grasp by strengthening the intrinsic muscles of the hands including the lumbricals using a recycled egg carton and straws!

 

Read about how and why this is great for handwriting here.
 

Need another activity with an egg carton?

Looking for more ways to recycle an egg carton?  Try these: 
 
 egg cartons 
Egg Carton Mache Molds by Teach me Mommy 
Flowers by The Gingerbread House 
Daffodils by Nemscok Farms 
Space Station by Peakle Pie 

Spring Fine Motor Kit

Score Fine Motor Tools and resources and help kids build the skills they need to thrive!

Developing hand strength, dexterity, dexterity, precision skills, and eye-hand coordination skills that kids need for holding and writing with a pencil, coloring, and manipulating small objects in every day task doesn’t need to be difficult. The Spring Fine Motor Kit includes 100 pages of fine motor activities, worksheets, crafts, and more:

Spring fine motor kit set of printable fine motor skills worksheets for kids.
  • Lacing cards
  • Sensory bin cards
  • Hole punch activities
  • Pencil control worksheets
  • Play dough mats
  • Write the Room cards
  • Modified paper
  • Sticker activities
  • MUCH MORE

Click here to add this resource set to your therapy toolbox.

Spring Fine Motor Kit
Spring Fine Motor Kit: TONS of resources and tools to build stronger hands.

Grab your copy of the Spring Fine Motor Kit and build coordination, strength, and endurance in fun and creative activities. Click here to add this resource set to your therapy toolbox.

Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.

bilateral coordination activity with an egg carton