Fine motor skills relates to how children use the muscles in their fingers, hands and forearms to do activities. It can often relate to doing fiddly things such as picking up a small marble, or pea, or doing up a button. As children develop, their hand-eye coordination improves. This will help them when they start school, so that they’re able to do things like use a pen/pencil, and scissors and so on. If your child does not appear very dexterous, is could be worth having your child assessed to ensure that they do not have any learning issues. Below are some lists of fine motor activities, which children should be mastering by certain age stages:
Fine Motor Skills for Preschoolers – 2-4 Year Olds
When children are not yet at school, but at preschool they should be able to:
- Button and unbutton
- Work a zip
- Clap their hands
- Stick things onto paper with glue
- Use pencils, pens and crayons to color and draw
- Touch their fingers
- Build a tower using 10 blocks
- Complete puzzles with 5 or more pieces
There are various activities you can give to preschool children that will help them to develop these skills:
- Pressing golf-tees into foam
- Transferring items from one tray to another using tongs
- Putting beads into play dough
- Threading beads onto string, or uncooked spaghetti
- Weaving with paper or material
- Placing pipe-cleaners into the holes of a colander
- Putting coins in order
- Tissue paper flowers
- Placing things into slots
- Edible finger painting
Fine Motor Skills Activities for 5 Year Olds
By 5 years old it should be determined whether your child is right or left handed, that is the hand they’ll use for most fine motor tasks. At this age, a child should be able to:
- Draw a cross
- Cut along a straight line with scissors
- Color inside the lines when coloring-in
- Draw shapes like triangles
- Draw recognizable pictures
- Build things out of Lego
- Put on own clothing
- Cut foods
- Spread butter
- Be able to print with capital letters
Children at this age could be given the following activities to develop their fine motor skills:
- Making pom poms
- Painting with mini-sponges
- Cut out pictures accurately using scissors
- write numbers or letters accurately 1-10
- Design own Lego models
- Complete a 20 piece puzzle
Fine Motor Skills Activities for 6 Year Olds
At this age, children should be able to:
- print around 20 letters a minute.
- Color inside the lines
- Cut shapes out
- Make different shapes out of play-dough or clay
- Tie their shoes
- Dress without assistance
There are various activities that you can encourage your 6 year old child to do to improve their fine motor skills:
- games like noughts and crosses (also known as tic-tac-toe) and dominoes will give good fine motor practice
- building Lego
- Planting seeds
- Doing jigsaw
- Tracing pictures
