Fine Motor Skills Activities: Part 5

To repeat what I said during "Fine Motor Skills Activites: 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'. "

 Play Dough Play

Supplies:

-Play dough

-Cookie Cutters

-Tooth picks

-Plastic butter knife

When I was looking for the fine motor ideas online, SO many of them revolved around play dough. I really think play dough is fine-motor learning's best friend. Anything that kids are going to do with the play dough is going to be strengthening their fingers, but here are some of the specific things they said will help. (Just pulling the lid off the play dough was good fine motor for us.)

 Pinch it

 Press it

 Roll it, both with your palm and with your fingers

Stretch it

Pound it flat

 Squish it

 Make a bowl using your tri-pod fingers (index,middle, and thumb).

 Cookie cutters are also great regardless of what you are pressing them into. It makes those fingers have to press and push.

 

 Use toothpicks to draw and poke into play dough. See how she naturally wants to use those three fingers without even knowing that is our goal.

 Cut play dough with a plastic knife. It takes strength to cut across it and helps with that grasp action of using scissors too.