What are Fine Motor Skills?
Fine motor skills is a term mainly used by schools and Nurseries to describe children’s coordination and strength with small motioned activities. It refers to the small movements that require using the small muscles within our hands, wrists and fingers. The skills that are used require coordination and dexterity to be performed to a good level.
Examples of Fine Motor Skills
Examples of fine motor skills encompass a wide range of activities that require intricate hand-eye coordination and precise manipulation of small objects. Here are some notable examples:
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Writing and Drawing: The ability to hold a pencil or pen, control the pressure and movement, and create legible letters and shapes on paper.
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Cutting with Scissors: Using scissors to accurately follow lines and cut along them, promoting hand strength and control.
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Threading and Beading: Stringing beads onto a string or thread, or threading a needle, necessitating careful hand movements and visual coordination.
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Buttoning and Zipping: Manipulating buttons, snaps, and zippers on clothing to fasten or unfasten them, refining hand-eye coordination and finger dexterity.
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Playing Musical Instruments: Playing instruments like piano, guitar, or violin requires precise finger movements to produce specific notes, chords, or melodies.
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Typing and Keyboarding: Operating a keyboard or typewriter with accuracy and speed, pressing individual keys with the appropriate fingers.
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Manipulating Small Objects: Activities such as building with blocks, assembling puzzles, or constructing models involve handling and manipulating small pieces, refining fine motor skills.
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Brushing Teeth and Hair: Holding a toothbrush or hairbrush with control, and performing brushing motions effectively.
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Using Utensils: Holding and maneuvering utensils like forks, spoons, and chopsticks to pick up and eat food, involving delicate hand movements and coordination.
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Handwriting: The ability to form letters, words, and sentences using legible and controlled writing movements.
It is worth noting that these examples represent just a fraction of the many fine motor skills individuals utilize in their daily lives, highlighting the significance of these skills in performing various essential tasks.
Why are Fine Motor Skills Important?
Fine motor skills allow children to become independent through their own self care such as feeding or dressing themselves as well as developing skills for learning. It is important to begin to use these skills at an early age so that they are able to expand upon the skills they have started to develop.
A simple progression of fine motor skills in young children could look like the following:
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Babies (0-12 months old) – grabbing and pinching things
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Toddlers (12 months – 3 years old) – mark making and stacking
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Nursery age (3/4 years old) – dressing themselves and beginning to hold a pencil correctly
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Reception age (4/5 years old) – forming letters correctly and cutting skills
A child who has good fine motor skills will be able to confidently and independently use the above skills and more. By the end of Reception at Primary school (aged 4/5 years old), children will be assessed on their fine motor skills following the government’s end of year goals. At the end of the year, the teacher will assess whether the child has achieved the following targets independently:
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Hold a pencil effectively in preparation for fluent writing – using the tripod grip in almost all cases.
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Use a range of small tools, including scissors, paintbrushes and cutlery.
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Begin to show accuracy and care when drawing.
How to Improve Fine Motor Skills?
There are many simple activities that you can do to improve fine motor skills within the comfort of your own home. It is always a good idea to do some basic hand and wrist exercises to warm your hands up before starting an activity (such as tapping each finger towards your thumb, gently rolling your hands using your wrists, scrunching your fingers into your palms and out again and even just stretching out your fingers and then bedding them again).
Lots of activities can be practised at home easily without even knowing that you are improving your fine motor skills like: opening/closing doors and cupboards, turning keys in locks, zipping up your coat, turning pages in a book, doing up buttons on your clothing, using a knife and fork whilst eating and turning on/off light switches. These will all help to strengthen the muscles in your hands before moving onto proper fine motor based activities.
5 Fine Motor Skills Activities
1. Playdough
There are so many ways that you can manipulate playdough using your hands and fingers. A great way to do this is by practising the basic skills – roll it, pat it, pinch it, stretch it and rip it. Along with this you can give a child a piece of playdough to create anything that they would like allowing their imagination to flourish and the best part is that they will be using their fine motor skills without even realising it.
2. Tweezers
Tweezers have a range of objects in a tray for the children to sort but the trick is that they have to use the tweezers to do this. You can get some great children’s tweezers online which allow children to practise coordination and building strength.
Once your child has achieved this with larger objects then begin to use smaller objects such as rice to scoop and pick up with the tweezers. You can look in MyMessyTot store to find easy kits to help with this too. This may take some perseverance but will leave your child feeling very proud of their accomplishments.
3. Threading
Giving your child small objects to be threaded onto a small rope or string can be tricky at first but requires them to use all of their fine motor skills. You could use something as simple as beads on strings or more adventurous such as penne pasta on spaghetti.
4. Building
Objects such as blocks for stacking or even more tricky blocks such as lego which they need to put pressure on to stick together before building their creations.
5. Painting
Using a brush or even finger painting uses fine motor skills and helps to develop mark making skills too. The ability to hold a paint brush correctly and have enough control to move the paint in the direction they want shows good fine motor skills.
What is the difference between Fine Motor and Gross Motor Skills?
Fine motor skills are focussed on using the small muscles in our body whilst gross motor skills refer to the larger muscles and movements usually within our arms and legs. Gross motor draws upon the coordination and balance in our bodies to achieve activities such as running, jumping, climbing, kicking. Some examples can be seen below:
Gross motor activities/sports – football, cycling, swimming, tennis, gymnastics and skating.
Fine motor activities/sports – drawing, sewing, puzzles, threading, planting and catching.
For more information about gross motor skills please click the link to take you to our gross motor skills page.
What do I do if I am concerned about my child’s fine motor skills? If your child is already in a Nursery or school setting then it is worth discussing your concerns with their teacher or key worker and listening to how they see your child’s development.
If your child does not yet attend an educational setting then it could be worth a trip to your GP to discuss what concerns you may have. In most cases, fine motor skills can be developed with activities at home and may require a few visits to an occupational therapist (OT), who will be able to guide you on the best fine motor activities to best support your child.
When do children start to develop fine motor skills? Children begin to use and develop fine motor skills from birth. Babies begin to use grasping movements with their toes and fingers to fold onto others, toys and clothes when first born, opening and closing their fingers and even swiping/holding onto mobiles and rattles. All of these show the start of developing these skills.
What should I do if my child struggles with writing? Learning to write is a challenging skill. Your child will need to be able to think about what they want to write in their head as well as how to write it. If your child struggles with fine motor skills then this could hold them back in their potential for writing. Some good activities to use are to improve mark making skills.
This could be to practice pencil control (copying movements on top of lines drawn), letter formation (practice letter formation with a range of messy play activities), controlled pencil grip (practice developing a ‘crocodile fingers’ grip for best control) but you can buy grips or use chunkier pencils to help with this and allowing your child to try mark making in a range of ways (e.g: paint brushes with paint or water, fingers in a sand tray, shaving foam and fingers, dipping a carrot in paint to write with).
There are so many ways that you can help develop their fine motor skills for mark making which will in turn prepare them more for writing real letters and words.