fine motor skills

Craft Pom Snowflake Line Awareness Craft

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Snowflake crafts are very big right now.  With the recent freeze we’ve been experiencing this week, paper snowflakes, snowflake drawings, and real snowflakes are seen daily in and around our house!  We made these pom pom snowflakes one morning and not only created a fun wintery craft, we also worked on line awareness and fine motor skills.

Snowflake Line Awareness Craft
{Note: This post contains affiliate links.  In other words, this blog will receive monetary compensation when any purchases are made through the links in this post.  Our opinions and ideas are in no way affected.  As always, we thank you for your support and community here at Sugar Aunts.}
We received the crafting poms from our friends at craftprojectideas.com.  The white color was perfect for a winter-themed snowy craft!

 Crafting Pom Snowflake Line Awareness Craft

We started by using small squares of light blue construction paper.  I wanted to use small squares of paper so that the snowflakes wouldn’t get too big, and then would encourage smaller movements…and more fine motor work.  I drew a basic snowflake shape on the paper with a pencil.  Little Guy used a bottle of glue to trace the lines.  He needed some help with this.  Squeezing the glue bottle and maintaining awareness of the lines to trace the snowflake shape really was a difficult task for a preschooler.  An older child who is working on handwriting and letter placement on lines would be more efficient at this task.  Keeping the glue right on the stimulus line is a great way to work on not only line awareness for use in handwriting, but also visual motor skill.  The ability to move the hand and watch with the eyes in a coordinated manner is visual motor ability, or eye-hand coordination.  This ability is a refined task that is needed for accuracy with lines and spacing in handwriting and ultimately leads to neatness in handwriting.  Line awareness can be addressed by crafts in many ways.  This Beads Sorting & Line Awareness craft was a fun way to create and work on eye-hand coordination.
Line awareness (and eye-hand coordination) is also necessary for scissor use in cutting tasks.  We used Stickers to Help with Scissor Skills while working on line awareness with cutting.
Once our snowflake was drawn in glue, we worked on more line awareness!  Placing the crafting poms in the glue lines was a great activity for Little Guy.  This task was great for the preschool age range.  He had to use a tripod grasp to manipulate the larger poms and a tip to tip grasp to manage the smaller poms.
Keeping those poms on the lines was a fun way to work on line awareness and fine motor skills at the same time.
Small snowflake decoration would be great for a wintery banner, hung in the window, or even on a card to Grandparents!

Best Fine Motor Play Ideas for Kids

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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!
Best Fine Motor Activities for Kids

Top Fine Motor Play Activities for Kids

{Note: This post contains affiliate links.  In other words, this blog will receive monetary compensation when any purchases are made through the links in this post.  Our opinions and ideas are in no way affected.  As always, we thank you for your support and community here at Sugar Aunts.}
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.
 
 

Christmas Sensory Fine Motor Noodle Play

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This sensory play activity with noodles was a hit with Baby Girl (age 2)!  She loved the fine motor aspect and the sensory play.  She is a fun-loving two year old and this Christmas play activity was just right for her. 
 


 


Christmas Sensory Play with Noodles

 
Candy Cane Sensory and Fine Motor Christmas Play with noodles. By Sugar Aunts

Noodle Fine Motor and Sensory Play

 
{Note: This post contains affiliate links.  In other words, this blog will receive monetary compensation when any purchases are made through the links in this post.  Our opinions and ideas are in no way affected.  As always, we thank you for your support and community here at Sugar Aunts.}
 
We had a handful of noodles that were left over from a meal and were not going to be eaten.  These were the perfect thing for a little sensory and fine motor play…candy cane style!  I grabbed half of the noodles and tossed them with red food coloring in a baggie.  A few drops of peppermint extract 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!
 

We had the red noodles mixed in with the un-dyed noodles in a bin and a cookie sheet right beside it.  Baby Girl spent the longest time just pulling noodles out and laying them on the cookie sheet.  This was such a fun sensory play experience for her. 

 
I extended the play a little bit longer (and added a fine motor component) by pulling out a recycled grated cheese container.  I showed her how to thread the noodles into the holes of the lid.  This was great fine motor work.  She loved threading the red and white noodles through the holes.  We worked a little on the color red, too. 
 
 

Spaghetti Wreath Christmas Ornament for Kids to Make

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  We’ve been making a ton of Christmas crafts this month.  This Spaghetti Wreath Ornament made from dyed pasta was SO much fun!  One of the cousins were at our house one day for a little crafting time and all of the kids really got into the process of making our ornaments.

 Kid Made Ornaments: Spaghetti Christmas Wreath

My kids (aged 6, 4, and 2) and my little niece and nephew (age 2) really got into each step of this kid-made ornament.  They got to explore a little sensory fun with dyed and cooked pasta AND hone their fine motor skills while placing the pasta in the wreath shape and adding pom pom berries.
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Materials needed for these ornaments:
  1. Start by adding green food coloring to your cooked pasta.  I put the pasta into a container with a lid so the kids could shake, shake, shake that pasta. The gross motor work was a great way to get out a little excess winter energy (perfect!) and at the same time, coat the spaghetti with a nice green color. 
  2. Squirt in a lot of glue (depending on how much pasta you’ve got going on there…)
  3. and give that container another good shake.  You want all of the pasta coated with glue.

4. Place a sheet of wax paper on the table and you are ready to get started on forming the wreaths!  This job was a little better for Big Sister (age 6), and we used a spoon to help form the wreath shapes.  {Note:  If you use your fingers, you WILL end up with Grinch-like green fingertips!}

5. Place the red pom poms around the wreaths.  This part was great for fine motor dexterity.  Picking up those little poms and placing them carefully on the wreaths used a nice tip to tip grasp and was pretty fun, too!
We finished with another generous squirt of glue around the wreaths to make sure they stuck together as they dried.
These little guys took two whole days to dry!  This is definitely a craft that will require advance planning, but it is so worth the wait!  Once dried and on the tree, these pasta wreaths look pretty cool!

Let us know if you try this craft at home, and how it goes for you!  We love to hear from you.

Scooping Words Activity

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This scooping words activity is a fun way to work on literacy and fluency with reading. Use this activity along with our ping pong bounce game for fine motor fun with reading! This is a multisensory learning activity kids love.

Scooping Words

Sight Words and decodable reading are something that we’ve been working on every day around here.  With Big Sister being in Kindergarten (and my oldest…so this is all new to me, too!) we’ve been going right along with the fast pace that reading, writing, and math brings home for homework every day. 
 
And not only that, I love to add fun and creative ways to supplement Big Sister’s work.  
 
This Sight Word Scooping Activity was a fun one for a little after school (and after homework) fun.  We used ping pong balls to practice a lot of her sight words but also some of her decodable words.  This activity was great for a new reader because it added in some fun while encouraging fine motor skills to the learning.   
 
 
You might have seen some of our other sight words activities that we’ve been doing recently (with string, with clothes pins, and with a scavenger hunt among the fun). 
 
Big Sister is doing so well with her new reading skills and it’s still hard for me to believe my little girl is reading!!
 

Why Use this Scooping Words Activity?

This scooping words idea builds skills in several areas:

 
 

Sight Word Scooping Activity to learn, match sight words with ping pong balls. By Sugar Aunts.

 
 
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Sight Word Scooping Activity to learn, match sight words with ping pong balls. By Sugar Aunts.
 
We started with a set of ping pong balls, and a Mini Muffin Pan. 
 
I had written some words on the ping pong balls and had a few of them set into the mini muffin tin.  
 
Big Sister read the sentence and smiled.  She loves that she can decipher words into meaning, too!  Other ping pong balls were in a bowl ready for scooping.
 

 

Scooping Words Activity

Big Sister grabbed the Ice Cream Scoop and started scooping the ping pong balls into the muffin tin. 

She would tell me the words on the pin pong balls as she scooped.  Baby Girl had to get involved in this activity when she saw the scooping fun! 

Scooping and pouring (and scooping words) is a great fine motor activity for toddlers, so this was not only fun for her…it was also a great developmental activity!

For Big Sister, scooping the ping pong balls while making sure the words were showing was good for her fine motor work.

 
I added a handful of Mini Muffin Cupcake Liners with the same words written out on them.  They were in a random order for Big Sister to match words. 
 
She plopped a ping pong ball with the matching word into the cupcake liner.
 
 
She decided that we needed some water in the bowl to make scooping a little more fun.  She was right.  It was more fun! 
 
(Especially for Baby Girl.  She was in scooping heaven, here!)
 
 

Working on fine motor skills, visual perception, visual motor skills, sensory tolerance, handwriting, or scissor skills? Our Fine Motor Kits cover all of these areas and more.

Check out the seasonal Fine Motor Kits that kids love:

Letters Fine Motor Kit
Kit de motricidad fina de verano
Summer Fine Motor Kit
Outer Space Fine Motor Kit
Space Fine Motor Kit
Spring fine motor kit
Valentines Day fine motor kit
winter fine motor kit
Winter Fine Motor Kit

Or, grab one of our themed Fine Motor Kits to target skills with fun themes:

Want access to all of these kits…and more being added each month? Join The OT Toolbox Member’s Club!

Fine Motor Egg Carton Tree Activity

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Egg carton tree for a fine motor Christmas craft
 

We are in full Christmas craft mode around here with tons of Christmas fine motor activities…and this egg carton tree was a fine motor hit! We’re excited to share more Christmas crafts and activities that develop motor skills, like this festive egg carton craft.

For now, we’ve got a fun fine motor activity that the kids will love!  This Fine Motor Christmas Tree activity and craft was a favorite of Little Guys’.  He loved sticking the egg carton pieces through the skewer and seeing his Christmas tree grow!  We do so many fine motor activities in our house and this one was just right for the Christmas season!



Fine Motor Christmas Egg carton Tree 

fine motor christmas tree craft made with egg cartons
 
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We started with a recycled egg carton and some Washable Green Tempera Paint, a paint brush, and our Spill Proof Paint Cup. (We love these things!  Never have spilled paint and the snug lids keep the paint from drying up between uses. Perfect for little artists!)
 
Paint the egg carton green.  Let dry.
 
 

After the paint dried, I cut out each section of the egg carton.  Now we were ready for the fun part!

 
Little Guy LOVED this!  He used a Bamboo Skewer to poke through each of the egg carton sections.  He slid each section down the length of the skewer.  This is pure concentration, here!  (I would suggest putting a wooden cutting board under the skewer if you do this one at home.  Our table was fine, but I wouldn’t want any skewer holes in your dining room table!)
 
 
Once all of the egg carton pieces were on the skewer, we slid them down to fill out the whole tree.  For the next part, I didn’t get any pictures, but it was really easy. 
 
We put a lump of play dough in a little red Christmas-y cup and stuck the skewer into the dough.  Little Guy and I used glue to put little dots all over the egg cartons. 
 
Now, this was Baby Girl’s favorite part…She loved sticking the red Sequins onto the glue dots.  This is such a great fine motor activity using a neat pincer grasp to hold the sequins and place them on the tree. 
 
When the skewer is positioned upright in the play dough, the child’s wrist is positioned in an extended position.  This is just right for pre-handwriting and for improving tripod grasp when writing. 
 
This Christmas tree activity and craft was fun for all ages!  If you make one at home, let us know! We love to see your versions of our ideas!!
 
 
 

More Fine Motor Christmas Tree Activities

For more fine motor Christmas activities that develop precision and dexterity skills, try this fine motor Christmas card that kids can make and give to family and friends.
 
This clothes pin Christmas tree builds hand strength, bilateral coordination, and eye-hand coordination skills.
 
Be sure to check out all of our Christmas fine motor activities here.
 
And, for holiday fun with fine motor skill-building, you’ll love the convenience of our Christmas Fine Motor Kit:
 

Looking for done-for you therapy activities this holiday season?

This print-and-go Christmas Therapy Kit includes no-prep, fine motor, gross motor, self-regulation, visual perceptual activities…and much more… to help kids develop functional grasp, dexterity, strength, and endurance. Use fun, Christmas-themed, motor activities so you can help children develop the skills they need.

This 100 page no-prep packet includes everything you need to guide fine motor skills in face-to-face AND virtual learning. You’ll find Christmas-themed activities for hand strength, pinch and grip, dexterity, eye-hand coordination, bilateral coordination, endurance, finger isolation, and more. 

Click here to grab the Christmas Therapy 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.

Easy Last Minute Advent Calendar for Families

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 Use these easy last minute Advent calendar ideas for families as a way to connect this season. This advent calendar is a craft the kids will love to create each year while developing fine motor skills and making memories! 

For Christmas activity ideas with a therapy punch, use these 25 days of Christmas play ideas. Paste them onto the Christmas lights in the Easy last minute Advent calendar below.

 
 

 

Does your family made an Advent Calendar each year?  We love to fill our Advent Calendar with activities for the whole family, and designed to make memories.  This year, we were a little late getting our calendar filled with activates and figured there are so many other busy families who are in the same boat!  We needed an Easy, Last Minute, and Home-made Advent calendar.   This calendar does just that.  This was so easy to throw together, and with a little help form the kids, hang in our home for festive Christmas décor!  We chose activities that are part of are usual Holiday traditions, so that it would be easy to add into our days leading up to Christmas.  We really don’t need to have a huge to-do list every day and make more work for our selves.  This Christmas Advent Calendar is perfect for busy families and will make lasting memories!
 
{Note: This post contains affiliate links.  In other words, this blog will receive monetary compensation when any purchases are made through the links in this post.  Our opinions and ideas are in no way affected.  As always, we thank you for your support and community here at Sugar Aunts.}
 
 

 Easy Last Minute Advent Calendar

To make our calendar, I cut light shaped pieces of red and green  Construction Paper , and little black squares.  These were by no means exact AT ALL!  Just easy and quick.  A little Glue
to hold the black squares in place, and the lights were done.

 

 
 

Advent Calendar Activities for Families

The kids and I came up with fun Christmas activities that we normally do every year to write on our lights.  This is memory making right here, folks!  With a black Marker, I wrote out our favorite traditions…
 
Decorate the Christmas Tree
Eat a candy cane
Donate toys
Visit Santa Claus
Watch Frosty the Snowman movie
Make cookies
Play with Christmas Play Dough
Make Christmas cards
Drink hot cocoa
Deliver treats to neighbors
 
…What holiday traditions are part of your family?
 
A little tape and Red Yarn, our lights were strung!  We used clothes pins to attach our activity lights for ease and for the one reason that may make our holiday very simple…
we can easily change the activities around based on what our day looks like.  Maybe on a certain day, Christmas play dough is just NOT going to happen.  Switch it out for Reading a Christmas Book.  
 
See, this really is the easiest Advent calendar for busy families!
 

Our Christmas Advent calendar ends with a star and a special activity…Singing Happy Birthday to baby Jesus!

So, we’re heading into the Christmas season with our last minute, home-made Advent calendar all ready to go!

Thanksgiving Felt Board Patterns Direction Following Turkey

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This Thanksgiving Felt Board activity was just the thing we needed one afternoon when Little Niece and Nephew were at our house.  It was a super cold day and we were happy to stay inside warm and cozy playing and having fun with a few Thanksgiving activities! 

Thanksgiving Felt Board

This felt board was super easy to put together.  I have a big sheet of orange colored fleece fabric that we use for all kinds of activities and play.  It makes the perfect fuzzy background for felt play, pretend play when we need to have an impromptu living room teddy bear picnic, and the perfect baby doll blanket!

This time we used our fleece to make an easel cover for our Felt Board Direction Following Turkey.  
We’ve been doing a lot of turkey crafts and activities leading up to Thanksgiving, and this one was even more fun for the littler ones.  Baby Girl (age 2) and Little Nephew (age 2) both loved moving the felt pieces all over the board.  And worked on fine motor skills and direction following and patterning at the same time!  


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Just a few supplies are needed for this activity. 
  • The Orange Fleece worked perfectly to hold the felt pieces of our turkey. 
  • The rest of the turkey was easy to make using Assorted felt pieces. 
  • A few brown circles, feathers of different colors, little turkey feet, a beak, and a wattle and our turkey was ready for creating! 
I snipped a few little pieces of felt and glued them to the backs of Googley eyes.  Then the googly eyes could stick to the fleece.
The fleece was perfect to throw over our Easel.  The fleece stayed in place pretty well without sliding much.  With the material up on an included surface, the kids were able to manipulate the pieces of the turkey while using an extended wrist. 
This positioning of their hand while managing small pieces prepares them for handwriting with a proper position of the wrist and fingers while holding a pencil.
I put one turkey together so the Toddlers could see where all of the pieces went. 
This task required visual scanning and direction following.  We put our turkeys together with multi-step directions to add a little difficulty to the task.
Little Guy (age 4) worked on some patters with the feathers.  We used an AB pattern for our turkey feathers.

Little Nephew is a smarty when it comes to identifying colors.  He told us all of the colors of the feathers easily!

Working those little pieces was a great fine motor task for these guys!
They needed to use a pincer grasp to pinch the littlest pieces, all while maintaining that extended wrist. 
We had such fun day with our Turkey patterns, direction following, and fine motor play.  This would be an easy activity to put together in these last days before Thanksgiving!

Fine Motor Sun Catchers

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The dyed pumpkin seeds have returned in this easy, last minute, thrown-together craft!  A fine motor play activity turned into a cute sun catcher craft.  We played with sequins and contact paper before nap time one day recently, and it’s a great Halloween occupational therapy activity.  With a little child-led art, the sequins-on-contact paper turned into a pumpkin seed/sequins sun catcher!
 
Fine Motor Sun Catchers

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Supplies needed for this sequin fine motor activity and sun catcher craft include Sequins, Clear Contact Paper, pumpkin seeds, and Food Coloring.  

Fine Motor Sun Catchers

Sequin Fine Motor Activity

We started out with this little fine motor play activity for the littlest kids in the house before their nap time one afternoon.  I put out squares of clear contact paper and a scatter of sequins and let them go to it!  I showed them how to pick up the sequins and stick them onto the contact paper. 
Baby Girl and Little Niece and Nephew are two years old and I wasn’t sure how this would go over with them.  They both really liked sticking those little sequins on the sticky paper!  (There was a lot of tongues sticking out too…you know when kids stick their tongues out when they cut with scissors or reeeeallly concentrate on something?  LOVE that cuteness!)
Fine Motor Sun Catchers

Pumpkin Seed and Sequin Sun Catcher

Then Little Nephew pulled out some of the Dyed Pumpkin Seeds that we have been playing with a lot lately.  He started sticking them onto the contact paper and making a pretty little art collage! 

These little buggers are so easy to make…just a few drops of food dye into a baggie of dry seeds and you’ve got an instant sorting, pattern making, art medium for play and learning!

Fine Motor Sun Catchers

One funny thing, when the dyed pumpkin seeds were stuck to the contact paper and then moved, the dye peeled off a little.  We stuck another square of contact paper on top of our sun catchers and hung the art to our dining room window.  Cute, easy sun catcher fun! 

Note:  Be sure to monitor closely children when laying with small items such as sequins and pumpkin seeds with young children.  All children are different and an activity like this one may not be appropriate for some.  Always use caution when doing one of the activities found on our website and social media communities.  Have fun!