Playdough

Playdough is just a fantastic resource for children's learning and development and at Country Kids we believe playdough should be readily available everyday. They can manipulate playdough in their hands by squeezing, pulling, rolling, squashing - all of which are movements to increase strength in their finger muscles. You could also add playdough cutters, where they are pushing cutters down into the playdough and popping them out with their fingers. We often like to add pasta, where they break the spaghetti up and push it into the playdough to make all sorts of monsters and dinosaurs! If you don't have any playdough, here is our playdough recipe!

Stickers

Isn't there just something so magical about stickers and the endless hours of fun children can have with them? At nursery we like to use them to strengthen those tiny finger muscles. We take a large peice of paper and draw shapes, lines, numbers and letters for them to follow with the stickers. Not only does this activity help with fine motor skills, but also encourages discussion about which shapes they are using and the opportunity to do number and letter recognition with your child. For pre-schoolers, you could write their name, or even a few names and ask if they can find their name!

Threading

There are a number of ways you could do threading at home depending on the resources you have. You may be able to see in this photo that we use pipecleaners and cheerios. The children love this activity as they get to munch the cheerios as they create, and also we turn them into bracelets when they have added all of their cheerios. Another way you could practice threading is penne pasta on a piece of string - you could turn this into a necklace! 

Blueberry Painting

This is a really fun activity but make sure you have something for them to do this activity on so it's easy to clean up afterwards! This one is pretty self explanatory, we like to squash blueberries on our paper to make different patterns and shapes. This is a really good activity to strenghten muscles as they push and squeeze the blueberries to find the juice! This activity could also be done with raspberries or cut up strawberries!

Sticking

Children love arts and crafts and it's a great way to promote confidence and self esteem as they show you their amazing work that they are so proud of. Using a glue stick is quite a tricky skill and requires concentration to pick up the glue and put it on their paper. The glue stick requires them to glue up and down or side to side, imitating hand writing motions. Sticking items to the paper is also a great activity as they push to make them stick. To enhance this, you could use hand muscles to rip up some craft paper to stick on your creation. 

Baking

Children love to bake, especially the part where they get to lick the spoon! Baking promotes independence and gives them the confidence to try new things. As well as lots of learning opportunities for numbers, measurements and reading recipes, it's also great for increasing their fine motor skills. Pouring contents into a bowl means they are exercising their wrists, similarly with mixing the ingredients as their wrists go round in a circle - again imitating hand writing motions. They could be rolling out dough, pulling and stretching or using a rolling pin with a little bit of force to make it nice and flat. If you make cupcakes, you might pick up delicate toppings one by one to focus on smaller grips between their thumb and index finger!

Reading

Reading  a book has many benefits and you often forget that this requires fine motor skills. Children will start by turning pages any way they can however with time and patience, they will soon learn how to turn the pages with their thumb and fingers. We try to promote independence as much as possible at Country Kids and will always try to encourage children to turn the pages themselves!

Cutting

Using scissors is a really tricky skill to learn and something most children struggle with at first. It takes a lot of hard work and determination to learn how to cut and will come with time and practice. Lots of children will start by using two hands, before learning how to cut with one. Scissors are quite heavy and takes strength from the fingers and the thumb to move in and out in order to cut. To begin with, you could try cutting cooked spagetti as it is easy to cut through. You could also use cutting as part of messy play to create something, cutting paper or material. For children that are confident with their cutting skills, a more challenging activty would be trying to follow a line. A great way to set this up is to selotape a piece of paper to a table. Draw some lines on the paper (first straight line then move on to wavy). The children can sit at the table and cut the lines all the way up to the table! 

Pre-Cutting Skills

A great way to help get used to the motion of cutting is using things such as kitchen tongs. You could use these in a tray to pick up pasta, pompoms or anything small to pick up one by one and pop them into a baking tray. This gives the child a focus whilst also practising squeezing their thumb and fingers together and releasing again.

Painting

Painting is often a hit or miss activity with children, some of them love it and some have no interest. If your child doesn't have an interest in painting (or drawing) try and make it specific to the child. This photo was tailored to one specific child and their love for elephants. It was also one of the first times they showed an interest in paint.. hoorah! We used small paint brushes to really focus on how we were holding them and the control we had to paint our elephants. Painting and drawing are really crucial to a child's development and getting them prepared to start writing later in life!

Pencil Control

This is an activity that will usually be for children aged 3 and above. Working on pencil control requires the child show good engagement in activities and a long concentration. Pencil control activities can be used for a number of reasons. It could be to practice holding the pen correctly, as they still may hold this full grasp. Or it could be to practise drawing lines and circles ready to start writing. It is important here to remember that children are not expected to be able to write letters  before they start school. Before the age of 5, children are still getting used to these hand writing motions and will still be working on drawing simple lines. 

You will be able to find lots of resources like this on Twinkl - something we use in nursery. Twinkl have the option to create a free account where you can access lots of their content. Additionally, Twinkl are offering all parents a free month of their advanced membership! To access this go to www.twinkl.co.uk/offer and create a new account. in the offer section, type in the code CVDTWINKLHELPS