Fine motor skills are something that describes the smaller muscles that we find in our bodies. These muscles may be small, but they are incredibly important for basic skills to be enacted. From activities such as writing and drawing to being to operate scissors or do up buttons, these are just some fine motor skills examples that form part of our daily routine and functioning. They give us the ability to operate small muscles in our hands and wrists and aid with our gross motor skills as well. Gross motor skills include our larger muscles which can make big movements to allow for things like running, jumping, swimming, and so on. There are plenty of fine motor skills examples that feed into entertaining and dynamic activities for your children to be involved with.
Fine Motor Skills are an important part of physical development in children. Starting when they are toddlers, fine motor skills continue to be harnessed and developed as children age. Honing fine motor skills ensures that your children will be able to perform daily functions and tasks efficiently and effectively. This could also involve doing these fine motor skills examples at a faster speed or with greater detail. Learning how to manipulate tools works these small muscles and develops fine motor skills in their bodies. These, of course, work in correlation with their gross motor skills to operate larger and more complex tasks.
There are multiple fine motor skills examples that your child will use daily. These are not simply physical functions that have physical outcomes but also ones they will use for their academic process. Things like pencil skills which will be used for writing abilities but also for creative and artistic endeavours. Fine motor skills examples also include things such as scissor skills. If your children are partial to playing with things like Lego, these are also fine motor skills examples as they work with problem-solving and critically playing blocks together. This could be materials like Lego and Duplo, but can also be objects such as train tracks and puzzles. Playing on the computer and typing, as well as manoeuvring the mouse can be considered fine motor skills examples as well.
Fine motor skills examples aren’t limited to activities or actions, but they can involve simple tasks that we, as adults, take for granted. Getting dressed, tying shoelaces, using zips, buckling belts are all fine motor skills examples. Even the processes of eating can be considered fine motor skills examples as people are using cutlery, opening containers or jars, or perhaps opening bottles. Cleaning one’s teeth, brushing your hair, there are multiple fine motor skills examples of where small muscles play a large role in daily life and our functions. Not only that, but fine motor skills also challenge our physical perceptual skills like hand and eye coordination is a large part of the learning process.
Being able to encourage your child to use their fine motor skills is important. Building those small muscles ensures that they have an understanding of activities and they can continue to physically develop at a good pace. Harnessing the synchronisation of the hands and fingers is important for daily tasks and functioning but this can be aided with fine motor skills examples through fun and exciting activities. Using household objects, you can create fine motor skills examples and activities that develop your child’s functional skills whilst also creating a fun and exciting learning environment.
Fine motor skills examples and activities don’t need to simply create functions, some activities can be used to improve your child’s literacy and numeracy. Using pipe cleaners and small pieces of straws, get your child to insert as many of the straws as possible into the pipe cleaner. This activity is a perfect way to encourage literacy for your children as you can get them to form letters out of the pipe cleaner that they have just decorated. This is a great way of practicing phonics with your child as you can encourage them to sound out the letter. If they have a firm grasp of that, then you can begin with blending and decoding, perhaps asking how you would use this in a sentence. This is also a great way to show how we view letters. For example, turning the letter ‘W’ upside down could symbolise an ‘M’. This is a creative and dynamic activity that encourages children to also exercise their small muscles effectively.
Fine motor skills and examples can be taught effectively to children using creative methods that also manage to challenge their critical thinking skills. There are plenty of opportunities for children to learn numeracy skills and literacy skills whilst honing their fine motor skills as well. Using fine motor skills examples to enable and encourage children to build on their techniques is an important skill to instil in children as they grow and learn.
There is no age limit to when fine motor skills can be introduced to children. In fact, teaching children fine motors skills examples from an early age can only serve to aid them as they learn and increase their daily functioning. Toddlers can learn about patterns using a variety of different methods to keep them engaged and entertained. This is a great way of teaching toddlers and other early years children how to differentiate colours. Using objects like play doh is a great way of ensuring that children are entertained as they have a variety of sensory experiences that are delightful but educational.
To play this basic activity that helps with children’s fine motor skills, all the materials that have to be collected are play doh, a spaghetti stick, and small pieces of plastic straws. You should lay out a colour pattern on the spaghetti stick using the play doh as a base. Put two different colours on the straw for the children to play with. Repeating you, encourage the child to lay out the pattern using two colours of straws. This is a great way of introducing them to sequences while helping them with their fine motor skills.
Leave a Reply