Fine Motor Skills Activities: Part 1

 I have been busy lately doing activities with my kids that are more learning-type activities and not as blog friendly as kids crafts. I wanted to do a series of post about fine motor skills though because that is something we have been focusing on at my house. My daughter started kindergarten this year and I spent so much time before kindergarten making sure that she knew her letters, sounds, shapes, colors, starting basic reading and site words, etc that in retrospect I didn't probably spend as much time on fine motor activities like writing her name and scissors as I should have. She is a little behind in those categories so I searched the internet for a variety of activities I could do with her that would help her fine motor skills that were fun activities and not just practicing writing letters and scissor cutting (although we do that too). I thought maybe this might be helpful for someone else in my same position. I actually made a little fine motor activities bin that we work from and she just gets to pick activities from it and the best part is she gets excited about it and doesn't know she is "working". 

Pom Pom Sorting

What you need:

-Close pins

-Assortment of colored pom poms

-Sorting cups

-Markers for labeling cups

 The key to this activity is making them use  the three finger grasp (thumb, index finger, and middle finger). Pinching the close pins open is awesome strength building in those fingers. It is work without them knowing it is work. I had my girls use the clothes pins to pick up pom poms and drop them in the cup that was labeled the correct color. My girls can't read all the color names, so the cups are written with a marker that is the same color as the word. (i.e. "Green" is written with a green marker)

 They LOVED it and sorted all the pom poms and asked to do it all over again.

You end up with cups full of pom poms of the correct color. So you are also working on sorting skills. I have been very pleased thus far with the progress of her fine motor skills in the last couple weeks we have started the fine motor activities bin. More ideas to come...