If you are working on building intrinsic hand strength and the fine motor skills kids need to improve tasks such as maintaining a pencil grasp or coloring with endurance, than this space play dough mat is perfect for you.
Kids can use play dough mats to strengthen their hands and develop essential skills needed for writing with a pencil, dexterity in fine motor tasks, and precision in fine motor coordination tasks. This free play dough mat has a space theme and you can print off the printable play dough mat and add it to your therapy toolbox.
This space play dough mat is just one tool to use when looking for playdough activities for fine motor skills.
Kids love play dough mats like this space worksheet. When they roll play dough to fit in the spaces on the printable sheets, they don’t always realize they are working on intrinsic hand strength or hand strengthening in general. Even better, this outer space play dough mat is a free printable playdough mat that will go perfectly with a space theme!
Space Play Dough Mat
Working on intrinsic hand strength is a task that doesn’t need to be difficult…with a simple play dough activity like this one, building hand strength is easy!
We’ve shared a few play dough strengthening activities before. There is a reason why: Kids NEED more hand strength. It’s evident in the increased pencil grasp issues that teachers, parents, and therapists are seeing every day!
Looking for more strengthening activities using play dough? Try this flower play dough activity.
Intrinsic Muscle Strengthening Activity
The thing about this outer space play dough mat is that it works on a specific set of muscles in the hand. The intrinsic muscles are those within the hand that enable dexterity and endurance in fine motor tasks. They are the ones that allow the arches of the hand to be used in fine motor tasks like manipulating objects with in the hand.
They are the muscles of the hand that contribute to separation of the sides of the hand and create the thenar and hypothenar eminences. Specific exercises can strengthen these muscles and one of the biggest ones is rolling small balls of play dough with just the fingertips of the hand.
That’s why we’ve created a series of free play dough mats that encourage small balls of play dough of various sizes.
Space Activity
Print off this free play dough mat and add it to your toolbox for a fun fine motor activity that kids will love.
You can enter your email into the form below and watch your email to find the printable outer space playdough mat. After printing, you may want to cover it with a plastic or laminated surface that allows you to use the playdough mat over and over again. Some of our favorite tricks for this include: (Amazon affiliate links are included below.)
- Laminating the paper
- Slipping it into a sheet protector sleeve
- Sliding the play dough mat into a dry erase marker pocket
- Covering the paper with clear contact paper
Grab your free printable outer space play dough mat here and start working on that intrinsic hand strength!
More play dough activities you will love:
Play Dough Farm Activity | Play Dough Activity Color Match | Play Dough Cupcakes
More Free Play Dough Mats
Here are more free play dough mats that you can print off and use to work on hand strength endurance, and fine motor skills:
Free City Skyline Play Dough Mat
More Space Activities
Pair this free outer space play dough mat with hands-on fine motor activities or virtual therapy activities for a themed therapy experience. Try these space activities that build skills:
- Space theme therapy slide deck
- Outer Space Connect 4 Game (teletherapy slide deck)
- Space Activities (hands on activities)
- Galaxy and Outer Space Sensory Activities
- Outer Space Visual Perception Worksheet #1
- Outer Space Visual Perception Worksheet #2
- Martian Spacing Tool for Handwriting
- Bilateral Coordination/Math Space Maze
- Outer Space Books
Free Space Play Dough Mat
Want to add this space play dough mat to your therapy toolbox? Enter your email address into the form below to access.
Know a kiddo that loves all things space, astronauts, and planets? The Outer Space Fine Motor Kit is your chance to develop fine motor strength, dexterity, and coordination skills.
Addressing hand strength, endurance, and precision is out of this world fun! The Outer Space Fine Motor Kit includes:
- Fine Motor Mazes
- Fine Motor Ten Frames for motor activities
- 1-20 Star Counting Cards
- Bead Copying Strips
- Space Alien Directed Drawing Sheets
This fine motor kit includes 24 pages of printable resources. Included in this printable pack are:
- Two pages of color coded bead copying strips
- Two pages of blank bead copying strips
- Four pages of “draw and write” directed drawing activities with a space theme (Includes 3 styles of handwriting lines: highlighted lines, single rule, and double rule)
- Nine pages of fine motor mazes
- 1-20 Outer Space Counting Cards
- Four pages of fine motor ten frames activities
These printable activities extend to work on a variety of other functional areas, too: handwriting skills, numbers, math, adding, subtracting, one-to-one correspondence, scissor skills, coloring, and more.
Click HERE to grab the Outer Space Fine Motor Mini-Kit.
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.
