What fine motor skills activities are there?

[RainbowFlowers]

Hi,

My 3.5 year struggles to dress himself and I think he needs more development in his fine motor skills. I don't want to push him too much with the dressing himself but I want to help him improve indirectly.

Do you know any fine motor skills activities I can set him? Or toys? Or websites for resources for this?

Thanks!!

Threading dried pasta tubes (eg penne) onto string. Drawing/colouring with wax crayons. Making pictures with Fuzzy Felts is good too. Jigsaws. And when he's a bit older and can be trusted not to put the pieces in his mouth, Lego is great for fine motor skills development.

You could try duplo, pushing cars, big wooden puzzles that have a handle to grip. When it's hot, a paintbrush and pot of water to paint the wall outside, to strengthen his shoulder and arm muscles. Filling a pot or bucket with different items, e.g. cubes or stones.
Activities including food, e.g. threading cherrios onto a straw and then eating them.

Children's tweezers to pick up something small such as cheerio or buttons, cutting, dot to dot, threading, stacking cheerio onto a piece of spaghetti, play dough, finger mazes. Hope that's helpful.

-Standing up raw bits of spaghetti so they stick up (e.g standing them in play dough) and threading Cheerios onto them

• play dough in itself is great for fine motor and there are easy ways to make it yourself.
• anything involving tweezers

Loads more ideas on Pinterest so I suggest looking on there for inspiration!

Worth a read

My DS has poor fine motor skills, they were first pointed out by nursery around the same age as your DS. Simple activities that use the pincer grip or require a point are good - we had chunky tweezers to pick up and sort uncooked pasta shapes/stones/novelty erasers , let him use pegs to hang washing and even building with Lego can help build skills.

It did improve things and he can't do most thing's expected of his age (14) except tie laces, he is Autistic though so there may be something lurking with that one I guess!

We were advised to use plasticine rather than playdoh as it's much tougher

Puzzles, threading beads, playdoh, lego, stacking blocks,

Lots of good ideas already.

Just to add a few - Using pegs, hanging from monkey bars, cheerios (picking them up, threading them on spaghetti), tightening nuts onto bolts, cutting paper with scissors.
There are loads of ideas on Pinterest too.

Encourage the use of a stress ball - I found me having one too helped and we would see who could do certain things faster/longer etc

Lego (sorting it is good too as well as building/playing)
Mechano
Stickle bricks
Hammer beads (under supervision)
Colouring
Sticking
Plasticine

Playing with sand

Cutting/craft/sticking

Even cars - especially on a track/garage

Finger food
& if/when having chocolate/Sweets/biscuits choosing buttons/mini biscuits etc anything that requires a pincer grip

Planting seeds

Make a grass head & let him trim it regularly

And all the things already mentioned!

Basically any play/activity that strengthens &/or involves a pincer grip.

Oh thanks everyone!! We'll have a go at everythings thats been mentioned.

@Russell19 whats a finger maze?

@UserNameNotValid thanks for that website, what a great resource. Well I'm pretty sure he has the same autistic traits as myself but I don't have enough traits to be classed as autistic.

@MJMG2015 I'll buy some stickle bricks today! Brilliant advice on pincer grip! Not sure why I hadn't realised that thats basically the fundamental part of fine motor skills.

If you Google finger maze or finger trail books. They have small indentation that you trace over with your finger.

Brill thanks