One of the things we’ve been working on this year with Ephraim in his three year old preschool is building up his fine motor skills. I’ve read many times that boys are usually farther behind than girls in this area and so far from my experience that has been so true.

We’ve been doing a number of different activities to help increase his fine motor skills, and I’ve been looking up ideas for future activities as well so when it comes time to really start writing he’ll have developed the muscles and fine motor skills he needs.

Here are more than twenty ways to help pre-writers build those fine motor skills . . .

 

MORE THAN 20 ACTIVITIES
TO BUILD FINE MOTOR SKILLS

* playing Lego – the action of putting all those pieces together (and also taking them apart)

* cutting – I’ll often draw shapes on a piece of paper for him to work on cutting out

* Pearler Beads crafts – so so good for those fine motor skills, my kids like making theirs into coasters

* puzzles

* transfering water from one cup to another with an eye dropper

* tracing using stencils

* using different mini shape punches to make shapes in paper

* gluing small paper pieces onto paper (use the shapes they previously punched out)

* gluing googly eyes on to paper

* adding stickers to paper

* using cotton swabs to paint dots

* using clothes pins

* threading beads on pipe cleaners

* stamping

* coloring

* using lacing cards

* putting nuts on bolts

* adding small elastic hair bands onto Popsicle sticks

* using bingo dabbers

* painting – we love the easy clean up of watercolors

* troll haircuts

* playing with Playdough

* using tongs to transfer items (like little bouncy balls) from one bowl to another

* or use tweezers to transfer mini pompoms from one bowl to another

* paper weaving (make a woven placemat!)

Do you have any other fine motor activities you would add to the list?