Games and Activities to Improve Fine Motor Skills

Fine Motor Skills have nothing to do with driving and everything to do with the ability to make movements using the small muscles in our hands and wrists. Children usually learn to acquire these skills as early as one or two months old and they continue to fine tune them during their preschool and early primary school years. Different children learn at different paces and some need additional help mastering them.

I am a huge fan of teaching through play so that the child doesn’t grow bored practicing but instead is engaged in a game or activity. Here are some games and activities that I stock that can help your child develop their fine motor skills.

1. Foxy Meadow Stacking Game

Foxy Meadow Stacking Game is a beautiful wooden game made by HABA Toys. The aim of this game is to stack as many cyclinders onto the rocking base without any rolling off. It’s suitable for children aged 2+

2. Wigglefants Stacking Game

Wigglefants is another wooden stacking game. This time, your child has to try and stack the wooden elephants according to the images on the cards. It is also recommended for children aged 2+

3. Tabletop Card Holder

Playing card games can be great fun for children aged 3+ but it can also be frustrating for them as they can’t manage to hold lots of cards at a time and remove and insert cards into their pile without difficulty. These Tabletop Card Holders are brilliant, as children can still use their fine motor skills be picking cards out of the pile but they don’t have to try and hold the cards at the same time.

Chunky Chalks

Chunky chalks and crayons are great for helping children learn how to hold pencils in the future and scribbling is great practice for writing and colouring. These outdoor chalks can be used on cardboard inside on wet days. I stock this large drum of 50 chalks, a box with 15 chalks and a smaller box with 6 chalks.

Buckets and Spades

Digging, carrying, emptying – all these activities are great for developing muscle control and strength in your hands.

Activity Books

Holding and using a pen can be a hard activity to master. These wipe clean activity books are brilliant as the activities are fun to do and they can be done over and over. This one is the Pen Control one but I also stock Numbers, Dot to Dot, Phonics, Mazes and Spot the Difference.

I hope this blog has helped inspire you with some simple games and activities to improve fine motor skills. If you liked it, you might also like my blog on ‘Cutting and Pasting Activities for Preschool Children’