Fun Learning With Fine-Motor Skills Activities for Ages 18 months and Above
You may have noticed that kindergartens and playschools, in general, use a list of structured games and activities, such as drawing pictures with crayons and pencils, stacking blocks and utilizing other such tools in their normal courses for kids. Have you stopped to think why these tools are so important? Let me put it this way, how is it so easy for us to write or type or to use spoon, knives, and forks while eating? How does our body pick up things so effortlessly like a coffee mug, a phone, a laptop? If you take a close look, these are few of the several skills we possess today, such as writing, typing, making coffee, etc., and all these tasks require one thing, that is fine motor skills.
Fine Motor Skills, also known as dexterity is about using our muscles of small body parts such as our hands, wrists, and fingers, in sync with our nervous system. It is crucial to give the kids, such as games or tasks, that require the usage of their muscles and works in conjunction with their brain. This helps in boosting the synchronicity of their body parts with the nervous system, making them physically stronger and mentally sharper.
As a mother of two boys, a 4-year-old and the other who just turned 19 months, I experiment with a lot of fine motor skills activities at home, which helps in their overall development and growth. Here are my 7 favourite activities, which are easy to add to the daily routine and can boost the kids to become more active in the day to day life.
1) Sensory Activity– 18 Months old and up
Require: You will need some colorful crepe paper, a normal piece of paper and glue.
Steps:–
Cut the normal piece of paper into the shape of an egg, creating a blank canvas. Then roll the colorful crepe paper into the shape of a ball, which I did with the help of my 4-year-old. Then spread some glue on the blank canvas and let your kids stick the colorful paper balls on the empty egg-shaped canvas. We let our 19-month-old do this part.
Sticking the paper balls is allowing your child to use their
muscles and move their hands turning it into a fine motor skill activity, and
letting the child use the glue, mess up his hands and feeling it while doing this
craft, is a sensory activity.
Sensory activities are very important as they
create a base for better eating for toddlers who are willing to touch and
explore food.
2) Sun Catcher DIY – 3 Years and up
Require: For this activity, we used some tissue paper to make a sun-catcher.
We gave our elder son child-friendly scissors, to cut the tissue paper into squares and stick it on an empty paper, which we had cut into the shape of an egg, just like the one we made during the first activity. Once this is done, you can stick the paper on the window pane where the sunlight hits, transforming it into a beautiful sun-catcher, which is a treat for the eyes for adults and children alike.
This activity will make your child use multiple muscles while holding scissors and paper. It will also help them learn how to make different shapes, and learn the shape names.
3) Blow Paint for Oral Motor Skill Art – 20 months and up
This super fun blow paint craft can be done as soon as the child can start to blow out of a straw.
Require: A blank piece of paper, some straws, normal paint and water.
Steps:
Mix the paint with some water, and put it on a blank piece of paper. Make sure that the blank paper is a little thick or it will start to tear coz of the water content. You can use different colors during this activity.
Now ask your children to take some straws and blow at the colors, letting it spread, giving the paper a colorful texture. You can write a poem on it later or turn it into a card as we did. The runnier the colors are, the easier it is to blow it out. This can also be used as a quick fun play date idea.
4) DIY Bird Feeder Lacing Motor Skill Craft
This is a great Motor Skill lacing activity for children and also helps in awakening a sense of responsibility towards nature and animals. Save the world, make it a better place.
Require: To make a bird feeder, you need some take away boxes, few popsicle sticks and ribbons.
Steps: Cut the cover out of the takeaway box and stick some popsicle sticks on the sides and the middle to make it look pretty. Now create some holes on the corners and tie it with jute ribbons to hang it. My elder son used loops to lace them in the threads.
We put some water in it and some loop food too for the little birds to feed on. This activity allowed us to give back to nature this time with a quick and thoughtful motor skill lacing activity.
5) FINE MOTOR SKILL SPONGE PAINTING – 15 months and up
Thanks to the movie Happy Feet, my elder son was totally obsessed with Aurora Borealis and he wanted to paint one.
Require: Canvas, acrylic colours, paintbrush, penguin cut outs to stick, glue, toothbrush and lots of sponge.
Steps: To make this we used blue, yellow, dark blue, green, purple, black and white acrylic colours. We used the toothbrush technique to make some stars. Then we cut out a few penguins shapes from shiny black paper and stuck it with craft glue. Sponge painting is a great fine motor skill activity especially if the children use clips to pick it up and paint.
6) Oral Motor Skills
This is a super easy straw airplane for kids to exercise some oral motor skills on while having lots of fun.
Steps: You will need some cello tape, scissors, thick milk straws and paper cut in square boxes. Take some thick milkshake straws and roll the paper around it on one end. Hold the shape the paper around the straw with the cello tape. Then close one end of the paper using the cello tape and put it over the straw. Then ask you, kids, to blow through the straw and see the plane take off.
Kids love such activities and it can keep them busy for hours. It is easy and super fun, and takes only 5 minutes to be made.
7) Ping-Pong Ball Shooter – Gross Motor Skills
This activity improves GROSS MOTOR skills by pulling the balloon.
Require: Paper glass/Tin cans/Kitchen rolls whatever you can find lying around the house, which can fit small ping-pong balls or pom-poms and balloons and scissor
Take a balloon and cut the enclosed part. Now take a small paper glass and cut the bottom of the glass creating a passage. Then attach the balloon to the paper cup where the passage was created. Now put the ping-pong balls or pom-poms inside the glass and you have a ball-shooter ready.
These are the easiest, no-brainer activities which not only helps create a fun environment in the house but also is full of learning and teaching moments. Children are like little scientists, always attracted towards new things and always trying to experiment. Now you can help them learn more through these fine-motor skills activities while strengthening their mind and body together.
