Fine motor activities  are those that help refine the muscles of the hand, thumb and fingers ready for writing, self feeding and dressing. Developing fine motor skills and building hand muscle strength through games and activities are great ways to prepare children for writing. Children are not ready to write and support a pencil until they have strong enough hand muscles. As these develop, children will have increasing control and independence over pencils, pens, paint brushes etc and their marks will begin to make more meaning.

With this being said, here are a few ideas that you could try that encourage the development of fine motor skills. Most of them are multi layered so practise numbers, letters, colours etc as well.

1. NUTS AND BOLTS ROBOT: B&Q and Wilko now do pick and mix nuts and bolts which is brilliant for picking up a range of items for low cost. This activity is great for developing pincer grip as you twist the nuts on. This is particularly popular with the boys at school too!

2. COUNTER POSTING: For this activity, I made a slit in a tennis ball and decorated it with a face. Emilia rolled the dice and posted the correct amount of counters into the ball. This develops the hand muscles because the ball needs to be squeezed to open the mouth.

3. MESSY MARK MAKING: Messy play can be great to encourage mark making. Using items like straws, feathers and lolly sticks can help encourage a pencil grip without the pressure to write. This was a popular messy play with Emilia, chocolate,cornflour, marshmallows and cake sprinkles.

4. BEAD LACING: Threading is great for developing fine motor control. For this activity I tied numbers onto laces and Emilia had to thread on the matching about of beads. To make this easier try threading on to pipe cleaners.

5. STICKER TRACING: Any activity involving stickers is brilliant for fine motor because it requires the pincer to peel and position. Emilia loves stickers although we do find them everywhere! This activity involved letters of her name to stick stickers over and then order.

6. LOOSE PART PLAY: Providing a tray of inviting objects to create with is a great way to encourage children to use their fine motor skills through play. This activity was a colour matching ‘firework’ theme, laying over masking tape.

7. SPRAY PAINTING: This activity was so much fun but did require quite a lot of strength. Emilia found it a bit tricky but definitely persisted. I wrote numbers on a page and then filled spray bottles with watered down paint. Emilia rolled the dice and sprayed the matching number.

8. POM POM POSTING: This is a simple and quiet activity that will keep the little ones busy while working on those finger and hand muscles. I simply just made some coloured funny faces attached to paper cups and gave Emilia tweezers and scoopers to transfer the Pom Poms. If you don’t have these resources then just use pegs to transfer.

9. CRAZY HAIRCUTS: This is a fun activity to help practise scissor skills. Printing a picture of Emilia’s face to add the hair to definitely made it enticing for her to do. She actually found it hilarious!

10. COUNTING HANGERS: Pegs are great for fine motor skills so I set this activity up to practise counting too. Each hanger had a number on and Emilia had to attach the right amount of pegs. To make it trickier add numbers to the pegs for ordering. Or even mix it up with letters on for spelling tricky words.

For more ideas check out my Instagram account (@myteachermummyandme) or follow the #finemotorskills_learning and even tag your own fine motor activities to share. Look forward to seeing your little ones fidgeting fingers.