Summer months bring baseball, climbing, swimming — numerous opportunities for kids to develop their gross motor skills. But don’t ignore fine motor skills, which are the small movements of muscles that involve using hands and fingers together to perform movement, such as pinching
or grasping.
Fine motor skills are important for your child to practice because they help lay the foundation for everyday tasks such as buttoning a shirt, tying shoelaces, grasping a pencil, using utensils, typing on a keyboard and much more. Fine motor skills can also help develop hand-eye
coordination in young children.
Some fun ideas you can do at home, with supervision:
Playdough/clay: Start with rolling, pinching, flattening and pulling, then use a toothpick to draw lines, letters or numbers on a flat piece. Use scissors and plastic knives to cut pieces of dough into snakes or ribbons.
Screws and nuts: Have your child separate nuts from the screws, and then thread them back together.
Hammer time: Let kids hammer with golf tees in styrofoam or, if age-appropriate, with nails in wood.
Tong competition: Use tongs to pinch cotton balls or other items and fill a jar, or race across the living room without dropping a cotton ball in a tong.
Because fine motor skills involve muscles, it is important to give them regular exercise. Keeping them strong during the summer will support school activities in the fall, like cutting, writing and typing.
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