fine motor skills

“I Spy” sight word sensory bottle

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We made this sensory bottle

and sight word “I Spy” bottle

for an easy little learning activity.  Two of us Sugar Aunts were together one afternoon for a little play session with the kids and this was quick and easy to put together. 
One bottle of sand.
A handful of foam sheet shapes (we wrote a few beginner sight words on front and back of each shape).


 It was perfect for the different age groups of the kids (5, 4, 3, 2, and 1!)
And these kids seem to LOVE anything they can put into something else. The little fingers were everywhere when we told them to drop the shapes into the bottle opening! This is Awesome for tripod grasp skills.
This was great for the 5 and 4 year olds who are learning their sight words.  We used some beginner reader words that they recognize (Their current favorite book around here is “Sam I Am”.  Seeing those words in a new place is pretty cool way to emphasize reading confidence, I think!)
The 3 year old knows most of his shapes (that rectangle gets him every time!) so this was good for his learning level.
The two year old could point to the colors (and with only three options in the bottle, it was not overwhelming for him).
And for the one year old, this was overall great for language development!
((and super fun to shake !!)
We had fun with our sensory sight word bottle.  Have you done one of these? Link them up in the comments, we would love to see them!

Foam Beading: fine motor. scissor use. tripod grasp.

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Use this fine motor activity to address the underlying skills needed for functional tasks like pencil grasp, scissor use, clothing fasteners, and more in a fun and playful activity that kids will love! We used simple foal curlers and a pipe cleaner to create a tool for boosting bilateral coordination, visual motor skills, motor planning, and more!
Fine motor activities for kids using foam curler beads.
We spent a “maybe-it’s-going-to-rain-maybe-it’s-not” afternoon this week making these fun foam bracelets.
Or, maybe it’s just typical Western Pennsylvania weather 🙂
We had a cousin play date this week and between searching for worms, picking flowers, and sandbox play…had fun making these

Foam Bracelets.

We started with foam rollers and pipe cleaners.
Fine motor activity for kids using beads cut from foam hair rolls and pipe cleaners.
The older kids snipped the foam rollers into pieces.  I drew lines along the roller with a pen, and they were able to cut along the lines. 
Be careful with cutting these.  Only older children should cut the rollers, and under supervision.  Use your best judgment based on your child’s abilities.
Cutting the foam roll was a neat sensation! It took a little cutting “oomph” concentration.  That different texture is great for cutting practice and line awareness. 
Kids can improve fine motor skills using foam curlers.
We used the foam pieces to “bead” onto pipe cleaners.  The center hole fits perfectly onto a pipe cleaner.  We had a 3 year old, a 4 year old, and a 5 year old who sat for a while and filled up their pipe cleaners with foam beads.
This is a great fine motor task to work on

Tripod Grasp and Bilateral Hand Coordination

in little hands.  They were all concentrating so hard on this task!
Little Guy loves the color red!  His pipe cleaner was red of course…and he didn’t even notice the PINK foam beads 🙂
We had a fun time with our beading session.  And even came up with a few other accessories:

beach small world play

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Many years ago, we made a creative ocean and beach small world play activity and it was a Summer hit! Whether you are looking for activities to keep the kids busy at home through hands-on, sensory play, OR if you need Summer occupational therapy activities to use in skill-building, a beach small world is a fun way to play!

Beach small world

Beach Small World Play

Creating a beach small world using miniature animal forms and homemade colored sand can be a fantastic sensory activity for children.

It doesn’t take much to create a small world, and the benefits are huge:

  1. Imagination and Creativity: Small world play encourages children to use their imagination and create their own narratives and scenarios. They can invent stories, develop characters, and build unique worlds, fostering their creative thinking skills.
  2. Language Development: Small world play often involves storytelling and dialogue, which helps children enhance their vocabulary, expressive language skills, and communication abilities. They can practice describing objects, expressing emotions, and engaging in role-play, leading to improved language development.
  3. Problem-Solving and Critical Thinking: When engaging in small world play, children encounter various challenges and obstacles. They learn to think critically, problem-solve, and find solutions to overcome these challenges, fostering their cognitive skills.
  4. Fine Motor Skills: Manipulating and arranging small objects in a small world setting requires precise hand-eye coordination, dexterity, and fine motor skills. Children practice grasping, pinching, and manipulating objects, which can enhance their fine motor abilities.
  5. Social Skills and Cooperation: Small world play often involves collaboration and cooperation when children engage in shared storytelling or role-playing scenarios. They learn to take turns, negotiate roles, and collaborate with others, promoting social skills and teamwork.
  6. Emotional Expression: Small world play provides a safe and controlled environment for children to express their emotions and explore different feelings through their play narratives. They can process and make sense of complex emotions, develop empathy, and practice emotional regulation.
  7. Sensory Stimulation: Small world play often incorporates sensory elements, such as sand, water, or different textures. Engaging with these sensory materials stimulates children’s senses, promotes sensory exploration, and contributes to their sensory development.
  8. Knowledge Acquisition: Small world play can be a great tool for learning about different concepts and subjects. Children can explore nature, geography, history, and various themes as they create their miniature worlds, leading to knowledge acquisition in a fun and engaging way.

How to make a beach small world

With a bit of imagination, parents can transform a small tray or container into a mini seaside paradise.

You’ll need to first gather just a few items to make a beach small world activity:

  • Animal figures: seagulls, crabs, and dolphins, fish, or other animals
  • Tray or Container: Select a shallow tray or container that is large enough to hold the materials and provide a play space for your child. It can be a plastic tray, a wooden box, or any other suitable container.
  • Sand: Use play sand or kinetic sand to create the beach or ocean floor. You can also dye the sand using food coloring like we did to make our homemade colored sand
  • Water: Incorporate a small amount of water into your small world setup to represent the ocean. You can use a separate container for the water or create a section within the main tray for a shoreline or shallow water area.
  • Rocks and Shells: Gather some small rocks and seashells to create a more realistic beach or coastal environment. You can collect these from a local beach or purchase decorative ones from a craft store.
  • Plants and Foliage: Consider adding some greenery or beach vegetation to enhance the sensory setup. You can use fake or dried plants, small artificial trees, or even real seaweed (if available and safe to use).
  • Tools and Utensils: Provide some child-friendly tools and utensils for scooping, digging, and creating patterns in the sand. Small shovels, spoons, sieves, and rakes can be used to enhance the sensory experience and encourage fine motor skills.
  • Optional Accessories: Depending on your preference and the space available, you can include additional accessories like toy boats, small beach umbrellas, mini beach chairs, or even a small plastic container to mimic a tidal pool.

As children manipulate the sand, feeling its texture and watching it flow through their fingers, they enhance their sensory development.

We used our DIY Colored Sand to do a little pretend play one rainy afternoon.

We used our refrigerator farm animal magnets and had fun with our pretend lake. Once you know how to make colored sand, you can use it for so many sensory bin activities!

 
 
 

small world lake
 
 
 
 
It was a fun day at the lake 🙂
 
 
 
The bunny went swimming…
 
 
And the temptation was too great…we HAD to mix the two colors of sand together. 
 
Looking for more ways to have fun this Summer? Grab a copy of the Summer Kit!
 
 
 

Fine Motor Strengthening Color Match

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When I saw how the thread matched the color of some of the crafting poms, I knew we had to do a color matching activity. 

Fine Motor Strengthening

I wrapped the thread around the ends of the clothes pins.

We received a great package in the mail one day from http://www.craftprojectideas.com/.  This was just a small part of the free goods we received… There are SO many project ideas and crafting supplies on their website. 
(we have a lot more crafting to do!!)

And Big Sister helped, too.  What a GREAT fine motor and bilateral hand coordination manual dexterity task!  She reaaaallly had to concentrate on this.  It was such a novel task for her.  It was neat to see her watch me wrap the thread, follow my verbal directions and cues, and as it became easier for her…wrap that thread around faster and faster!

Big Sister and Little Guy liked matching up the colors to the clothes pins. 
After they sorted the poms, we changed it up just a little.  I pulled out washable markers in the same four colors and Big Sister wrote right on the plastic tray.  She is learning to sound out words so we worked together on the letters to spell out the colors.

Pre-handwriting Warm-up Exercise

The pinching and fine motor strengthening with the clothes pins is a great mini-hand exercise to warm up the hands before a handwriting task.
This was such a fun activity!

Toddler Ping Pong Visual Motor Play

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Baby Girl had some alone time with mommy and we did allll her favorite things…played with Little People, read her favorite books, ran around outside and went in and out (and in and out again!) the sandbox. 
And Mommy soaked up the extra time for snuggles and belly kisses 🙂
We also did this fun little activity.  She LOVED having the whole thing to herself without Big Sister and Big Brother there. 

Invitation to scoop 

I put a little water in a veggie platter, pulled out the ping pong balls, and added an ice cream scooper.
She loved this! Scooping the ping pong balls out of the container, plopping them into the water, and scooping them up again.
Scooping is such a great visual-motor exercise for Toddlers.  They are working on hand-eye coordination, motor skills to coordinate the scoop to grab the ball as it scoots around, and plus, it’s just fun!
What 20 month old does not LOVE to play around in water???
This was SO much fun for her and we loved our mommy-baby afternoon together!
Looking for more scooping activities for Toddlers? Try these:

Fine Motor WATER PLAY

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This is part 2 of a two-part outdoor messy play activity.  If you missed part one, Sensory Paint Play(Part1)  was very fun…Check it out!  We left the bubble wrap/blue paint dry right in the bins overnight.


 
The next day was another super hot and sunny day.  Add a bin of water and some empty plastic bottles, and let the fun begin.

Sensory Play

The paint-y, texture-y, messy play returned when the water was added.
Plus, it’s just fun to pour water from bottles.
And put the bottles on your head, of course.
What a fun sensory play experience!

 Fine Motor Play

Baby Girl thought it would be pretty fun to drop the gems and beads into the plastic bottles.  She did this for a LONG time.  That little ‘bonk’ sound was pretty cool!
and, such a great fine motor task.
{{LOVE this picture!}}

Colors

When all of the water was added, we had a blast on this 85 degree day in our BLUE water bin!
Looking for more BLUE play activities:
Playing with colors: Cotton swab painting
Playing with color: Toddler Play
Blue Sensory Toddler Tray

Sensory Paint Play

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This sensory paint activity used bubble wrap for a wonderful tactile experience. We loved to feel the bubble wrap sensory activity. Kids can use this as a way to work on sensory touch and tactile defensiveness, or just for fun, creative painting!

Sensory Paint

This sensory paint idea is easy. You’ll need just a couple of items:

  • Paint
  • Bubble wrap
  • Paper to press onto the bubble wrap

How to do this bubble wrap sensory play

When you get a package in the mail that has bubble wrap, it’s a special day!  After some jumping and a little popping, we used the bubble wrap in a fun sensory play activity.
 
Finger paint, and a handful of beads, and glass gems made this extra special.

 

This sensory painting activity is a great activity for sensory exploration. Add it, along with this rubber duck painting activity to your painting ideas!
 

 
 
 
 

 
This was SO much fun!  Perfect outdoor play for a hot day.
 
 
 
Don’t you just want to get messy and play with this???
 
 
 
It was such a neat sensory experience…and very BLUE.  After we were done playing, we squirted the kids off with the hose.  I left the blue bubble wrap, beads, and everything right in the bin until the next day.  I had plans…
 
*stop back tomorrow to see what we did the next day after the whole mess dried!*
 
 
UPDATE: Here is the post for the next part of this two-day sensory play activity…PERFECT for a hot, sunny, outdoor messy play day! Fine Motor/Sensory/Water Play (Part 2)
 
 
We did use a little of that wet blue paint for some face painting.  Big Sister gave me a nice smiley face on my foot 🙂
 
 
 

Fine Motor Table-top Play

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This table top activity is a fine moor skill activity to develop pincer grasp. We loved using this activity to target pincer grasp, hand strength, eye- hand coordination, wrist extension, and more.

Tabletop activity

Tabletop activities refer to any kind of activity or game that can be played on a flat surface such as a table or desk. These activities often involve physical components such as cards, dice, game pieces, or puzzles. Examples of tabletop activities include board games, card games, puzzles, dominoes, chess, checkers, and tabletop RPGs (role-playing games), or the tape peeling activity we showed below.

This fine motor activity is a great way to build many small motor skills.  From neat pincer grasp to hand strength and arch development, this indoor play activity is one that builds many skills in a fun way!
 


 
 
 
So, one morning, we had four kids in the house (Big Sister, Little Guy, Baby Girl, and my Niece and Nephew).  They play well together. Most times.  And then other times.. they argue, fight, agitate, and do all of the normal brother/sister/cousin-who-is-around-often-enough-to-be-like-a-sibling…things! This morning, they were in a mood.  A we. need. to. get. outside. and. RUN. mood. 
 
and since half of the kids were still in pajamas and there were still breakfast remnants all over the dining room table…we played a little game.
 
We have a couple of rolls of masking tape hanging around and this mama/aunt thought they would love to do a little picking on the tape.
 
instead of picking on each other!
 
 
They loved it! Picking at the edges of the tape is perfect for little hand’s fine motor dexterity.  They are working the neat pincer grasp (tip-to-tip pinch of the thumb and index finger…think of the way you would pick up a very small bead or pin from a table-top)
 
 

table top activities for toddlers

 
It was sort-of like a puzzle, figuring out which piece of tape needed to pull up first.  And then, when they pulled up an intersecting piece of tape, again working the fine motor skills to pull that piece up.
 
 
When all of the pieces of tape were pulled up, Big Sister played a word spelling game.  She tore the tape into bits  (…tripod grasp, working on small motor strength of the hand arches, and separating the two sides of the hand in a small motor task…)
 
I told her how to spell the word ‘CAT’ and then gave her words that rhyme with ‘CAT’.  She wrote the letter and put it in place of the ‘C’.
 
 
 
Agitating/arguing/sibling crisis averted.  We put on play clothes and went outside!

Playing With Color: Cotton Swab Painting

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Use a cotton swab and paint to create a pretty bird craft while working on the fine motor skills needed for a functional and dynamic pencil grasp.

This was a fun painting craft we did recently.  We’ve been doing a lot of blue activities lately:
Playing with Color: Toddler Play
Blue Play Sensory Tray
Big Sister and Little Guy went dot crazy on these bird pictures.

…using that tripod grasp to paint away with the cotton swab.

We finished up our blue play with a little Fruit Loop lacing on pipe cleaners.
 In blue of course 🙂

…more tripod grasp play!