Is there a song or nursery rhyme that is a huge hit in your house? You know the one that is said over and over (and over) again? Right now we are on a This Little Piggy Went to the Market kick. Baby Girl (age 2 and a half) loooooooves This Little Piggy. She will ask me to do the finger play rhyme on both feet and then both hands again and again. I’ve even heard her saying it to herself…with lots of adorable mistakes. It’s beyond cute. I love when she asks me, “Mom, what does this piggy do?” and points to a toe. What a cutie!
When we made this piggy craft, Baby Girl very excited. I told her we were making a This Little Piggy craft and she was so happy!
This Little Piggy Went to the Market craft for Toddlers
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This craft for toddlers is very easy and a great opportunity for some learning, too. You can talk to your Toddler about circles and sizes (big and little). Toddlers are learning concepts such as size awareness and you can show them the big and little circles as you build the pigs.
I started with 5 big circles cut from pink construction paper and 15 small circles. We counted out the big circles together.
I helped Baby Girl fold ten of the small circles in half. These will be the pigs ears.
Big Sister helped out a little with counting out our piggy ears.
Baby Girl is all about using the glue stick. This Little Piggy Went to the Market + glue stick
= Baby Girl’s best day ever! She went crazy gluing on the big circles, ears, and snouts.
After all of the pieces were glued in place, I drew on little faces. We had fun saying the finger play while using our five little piggys to join in on the fun. Baby Girl played with these little piggys all day!
Visual Motor Integration is also known as eye hand coordination. Essentially, this skill is the ability to coordinate the hand in an effective manner directed by vision. When relying on visual motor skills, a person coordinates their movements based on what they see. A child requires effective visual motor skills in order to do so many tasks…forming letters, writing on a line, coloring within lines, cutting along a line, catching a ball, completing puzzles, reading, and so much more.
This fun (and colorful) activity is easy to create at home and a fun way to work on visual motor integration. We added a color matching component to our activity, but you can adjust this activity to include what ever best keeps your child’s attention.
Visual Motor Color Matching Activity
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I started by drawing small circles all over a sheet of construction paper. I used a bunch of different colors that matched the colors of stickers we had. These rainbow stickers are the perfect size for little fingers to peel and work on fine motor skills.
I had Baby Girl (aged 2 and a half) peel off the stickers and place them on the circles. Scanning for the matching color works on those eye-hand coordination abilities and also works on color identification.
This was also a great way for Little Guy (age 4) to work on his visual motor skills. He’s working on letter formation and ability to write in a smaller space with better control. The fine motor and visual motor work in the activity are perfect for the new hand writer.
This is such an easy way to work on so many skills. We’ll be doing this activity again, for sure, with a few modifications. Instead of matching colors to colored circles, try matching letters, numbers, emotions, and more!
What are other ways you can work on visual motor skills at home?
This pipe cleaner busy bag is a creative way to use pipe cleaners while helping preschoolers to develop fine motor skills and visual motor skills. Add this pipe cleaner busy activity to your list of preschooler activities!
Pipe Cleaner Busy Bag
I have been trying to think of activities to keep my 3-year-old son busy lately. He is a busy little guy a
nd always wants to be involved in what we are doing in our homeschool. I typically have little busy-bag activities for him to do and needed to add in some new ones.
We have lots of pipe cleaners so I decided to make a pipe cleaner shape matching activity. I created some simple pictures for him to use to create shapes with pipe cleaners or yarn. You could really do this with any shapes, but I thought it would be fun to make it a more creative picture with nature scenes.
I made several different printable pages that can be used in a busy bag or just for anytime.
We tried doing the activities with yarn as well and it is a little easier to shape them for younger kids.
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:
We are loving all things Spring these days. One rainy morning, Baby Girl and I played with this play dough fine motor activity while Little Guy was away at preschool. She loves play dough and was very excited to Grow a Garden with a few extras thrown in there to make a fun flower garden.
Play dough is such a great way to work on fine motor skills and this garden activity hits the mark when it comes to strengthening those little muscles in the hands. Not only that, it’s totally fun and happy!
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I started by making a bunch of flowers. I used my circle paper punches and glued circles together to make flowers.
Baby Girl and I stuck them onto green paper clips. It was a great way to get started on the fine motor work in this activity. She was really focused on putting the paperclips onto the flowers.
Next, I pulled out the green play dough and we started planting flowers!
Rocks were needed for our flower garden, of course!
Fine Motor Activity for Kids
We tried clay and play dough for this activity. The clay was more resistive to press the paper clips into, and a better strengthening tool…but it seemed to stick more to the paper clips. Play dough worked better for us, and was just as good a fine motor strengthening work out.
Pressing the paper clips into the play dough is a great way to encourage a tripod grasp while strengthening the intrinsic muscles of the hands. The small muscles within the hand are so important for arch support and control in many fine motor tasks (coloring, zippering, buttoning…)
If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know how much we love to do fine motor activities. Scissor activities for kids is one of our favorite fine motor topics and we’ve got a bunch of creative ways to practice them! This fun fine motor color sorting activity was part of prep for another activity we were doing (watch this space to see these foam squares again!), but we had so much fun with it, that we had to share!
Scissor Skills Activity for Kids
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We started with the wooden crates from our Melissa & Doug Food Groups. Besides being a totoally fun pretend play toy, the packaging is completely re-usable and perfect for sorting activities. We shared the picture of our four crates on Instagram and had some great comments about how awesome these crates are for all kinds of play.
I lined the bottom of the four crates with different colors of foam sheets, and drew thick lines on matching colors of foam sheets.
This was a great way for Little Guy to practice his cutting with scissors. The thickness of the foam sheets is great for new scissor users because it provides greater resistance and therefore slows the scissors more than regular paper. The thickness of the lines is another way to grade down the cutting task for new scissor users.
Slower cutting speed is good when the little one needs verbal and physical prompts to hold the scissors correctly, and how to position their assisting hand on the foam.
Little Guy is working on his scissor skills and needs prompts to hold the foam/paper close to his body and to move the scissors when he’s cutting, and not hos whole upper body. Strait lines are a good start for him for practice. Older kids or those who are doing a little better with their scissor skills would benefit from thinner lines, curved lines, or even using construction paper instead of the foam sheets.
Once we had all of the foam squares cut out, we were ready for our sorting. This interested Little Guy for a little while, but Baby Girl was the one who was really into this part of the activity.
She was able to sort the colors into the correct bin. We worked on naming the colors along the way.
Sorting the squares was a fun way to play and learn!
We had a great time with this cutting and sorting activity. Let us know if you do this at home, we would love to hear about it!
Looking for more scissor activities? You may like some of these:
Play dough is such a fun way to play and learn. We are big fans of the fine motor fun to be had with play dough. In fact, we’ve done other fine motor color matching activities with play dough before. Color matching with play dough is a fun way for preschoolers and toddlers to learn colors and so much more.
This play dough activity was great for the Toddler age range. Learning colors, matching, sorting, and fine motor work were all involved. Baby Girl was a big fan!
{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. You can read our full disclosure policy here. As always, we thank you for your support and community here at Sugar Aunts}
Color identification activity for Toddlers
We started with a bunch of colors of play dough. We used modeling dough, but you could also make your own play dough for learning and play. We worked on naming all of the colors of the play dough.
Color matching activity for Toddlers
I pulled out a bunch of colored paper clips
and showed Baby Girl how to press them into the matching color. She did pretty well with the matching of colors. The identification is a little harder for her. She’ll name some of the colors but stumble on others. (Baby Girl is 2.5 years old). She’s getting there, though! I love that she loves activities like this. She was really into it.
I love the colors of this dough!
Fine Motor Activity for Toddlers, Preschoolers, and School-aged Children
Pressing those paper clips into the dough requires a tripod grasp. The resistance of the dough is a great way to strengthen the hand, especially the arches of the hand. This is so important for manipulating objects in self-care tasks like buttoning. This is a great pre-handwriting activity, too. Definitely, it’s a good warm-up activity for kids who are at the writing stage. Pressing those paper clips into the dough would get the hand “awake” and ready for a coloring or handwriting task for older kids. I would recommend this activity for the school aged range, too.
Picking up the paper clips from a flat surface like the table is a great way to work on finger dexterity with children. You’ll need a tip to tip grasp to pick up the paper clip and manipulate it within your hand. What a work out for those little hand muscles! In-hand manipulation is essential for tasks like managing coins, rotating a pencil in handwriting tasks, putting small objects like pegs into peg boards, and so much more. Scatter those paper clips around the table…this is a great way to play and work on fin motor skills!
If you’re doing this activity with a younger child, be sure to keep a close eye on them. As always, use your judgment in what works best for your child or group of children in a school setting. The paper clips could be a choking hazard of course so if you are working with kids who may put them in their mouth, either work on one clip at a time or put this activity away for a few months. Better yet, pin it to your Pinterest boards for safe remembering 😉
How many other ways can you think of to make this activity a learning opportunity? Try sorting the paper clips by color or size. Pattern the colors of dough or paper clips. Count the paper clips as your child presses them into the dough. Ask him or her to press a certain number of clips into each dough ball. Sequence the number of paper clips that you’ve pressed into the dough. There is SO much learning happening here!
Looking for more play dough activities? We’ve been having a blast pinning to our play dough, clay, goop, and more board:
This sorting and pattern activity is a great fine motor and visual motor task for young learners. I love that the fine motor aspect builds pre-writing skills as well as math skills. You’ll also want to grab our color and count worksheet for more fine motor work with math and patterning as well as sorting objects.
Moldable Color, Shape, Sorting, Counting, and Patterns!
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We love playing with Wikki Stix. We’ve used them in so many fun ways. One day, Little Guy and I made some shapes and did a little sorting.
Little Guy was sure to tell me if the shape didn’t quite look right. “Mom, that square doesn’t look square-y”. We counted how many of each shape we had.
Little Guy made up a subtraction game as he put them into the box. He counted each time he took a shape away and said “…minus one iiiiiiiiissss….” He had so much fun doing this little game!
After we finished with the shapes, he said we should do a pattern. We pulled all of the wikki stix into strait lines and he came up with the pattern. This was a fun quiet time activity for both of us!
We’ve had a bag of mixed nuts with shells sitting out in our living room for days now. A couple of bowls and spoons make for a fun play activity for all times of the day!
Use this fine motor activities to teach kids hand dominance while working on bilateral coordination, visual motor skills, and more!
I gave the kids a couple of bowls and spoons with the walnuts, almonds, chestnuts…and a few other ones that I’m not sure of the names 🙂 …and they immediately started pouring from bowl to bowl.
Invitation to Transfer
Baby Girl (almost 2) and Little Guy (4) have been loving this! Little Guy’s been sorting the chestnuts into a pile and gathering them all up into a bowl. Baby Girl has been pouring and transferring nuts from bowl to bowl…and scattering the nuts allllll over the place 🙂
Invitation to Pour
This is such a great fine motor activity for little ones, and they love playing with a novel item. Pouring requires precise bilateral hand coordination or the nuts scatter all over the table…Although, they seem to enjoy that just as much!
Invitation to Scoop
Scooping the nuts with spoons allows for a great fine motor activity and fine motor coordination development, too. Baby Girl is getting some great spoon practice with this activity!
I’m thinking the walnuts, almonds, and friends will be out on the train table for a few more days for fun and exploring!
We’ve been having a ton of fun with clay recently. One sunny afternoon, Big Sister and Little Guy got creative and covered a big rock with clay. It sat out in the sun and got pretty soft.
It’s a great way to encourage development of fine motor skills and hand strength in a fun way!
This post has been sitting as a draft for weeks! We made a clay rock a while ago and before this was published, I wanted to see what our rock would do in the rain. It worked!! Check it out:
Sensory Play with Clay and Rocks
What great sensory play! Pressing that clay around was such a neat sensation. They could smear the clay around into such a pretty design!
Fine Motor Play with Clay and Rocks
Pressing the clay was a great fine motor strengthening activity. They could isolate individual fingers, press and push the clay into the other colors. The resistance of the clay worked their little hand and finger muscles.
So, after the rock sat out in the HOT sun for a while, we noticed that the clay was becoming warmer. We wondered what would happen if we baked the whole rock and clay.
Mom put the rock on a piece of aluminum foil and baked the rock on a cookie sheet at 350 for about 15 minutes. When this rock came out, the color was spread all over the rock! What a pretty rock for our yard.
I wanted to wait and see what would happen to our rock after it was out in the rain and sun for a few weeks. It is still looking very bright and pretty! The clay hasn’t seemed to come off at all in the elements.
This was such a fun experiment. Every time Little Guy sees the rock he says: “Hey Mom, Look at that rock, that was SO FUN!”
are the perfect size for little fingers to peel and work on fine motor skills.
and glued circles together to make flowers.
. It was a great way to get started on the fine motor work in this activity. She was really focused on putting the paperclips onto the flowers.
. Besides being a totoally fun pretend play toy, the packaging is completely re-usable and perfect for sorting activities. We shared the picture of our four crates on 
, and drew thick lines on matching colors of foam sheets.
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, but you could also 
