What are fine motor skills exactly and why are they important?

Fine motor skills are the group of skills used to manipulate objects with the small muscles in the hands, fingers, feet and toes, for example grasping, pinching and holding. Development of these skills is essential for writing and creation.

• Below are the activities I use most often to help refine fine motor skills, identify left/right hand dominance and to help teach correct pencil grip. Remember, if you keep activities relaxed and enjoyable and present them as games, the experience will be much more fun and successful for everyone involved!
• Tricky Fingers: This is a fun game for 1 or 2 that develops dexterity. This is a favourite of mine because it works on so many areas at once (colours, fine motor skills, sequencing) and kids tend to love it. The goal is to move marbles through the holes of the game with your fingers to match a pattern card.
• Barrel of Monkeys: you may be familiar with this classic game from the 1960s. Play using just one hand, and then the other hand, to learn left from right and to identify hand dominance.
• Rolling clay, creating shapes and letters, cutting clay – in order to teach the alphabet I make a letter then get the child to measure and cut clay to copy this shape. If letters aren’t of interest, you can make anything – a dinosaur, a cake, a tree. Even better, create something and then tell a story about it!
• Drawing letters in sand or flour on a tray. Children who enjoy gentle touch will also be entertained by you drawing a letter on their back and asking them to guess it. Rest assured, when it’s their turn they’ll make it as challenging for you as possible!
• Clapping games, switching between left and right hands. Do you remember doing this at primary school? Clapping games with another person are great for sorting out ‘left’ and ‘right’ and following sequences. They’re also a lot of fun!
• Putting rings on and taking them off (perhaps not your wedding rings!)
• Painting fingernails with nail polish.
• Threading pasta shapes to make a necklace.
• Using clothes pegs to peg clothes to clothesline (this uses the pincer grip). This is an activity taken from Montessori teachings, which is also beneficial for teaching life skills, sequencing and completing tasks from beginning to end.

There are endless activities you could do to work on fine motor skills – pick up sticks, using chopsticks, picking up beads with thumb and forefinger – you are only limited by your imagination.

A note on pencil grip. Why is it important to have the correct pencil grip? I can answer this one from my own experience, as a left hander who always had an incorrect grip. This led to easily tired hands and hand cramps, especially during periods of writing frantically, such as school exams! Developing strength and control in the hands helps children to learn the ‘pincer’ grip, which is vital for writing. A simple activity is holding a pencil, practice resting the pencil on the hand, then pinching to grip the pencil; back to resting then back to gripping without dropping it. Once the pencil grip is correct, then draw a fun pattern for them to copy and then colour in or decorate.

Have fun!