Most parents and caregivers know the importance of reading to kids, teaching them the alphabet, and helping them learn to count. However, fine motor skills are just as important as academic abilities. As you know, the development of these skills starts at an early age. Furthermore, it allows little ones to set the foundations for learning, coordination and performing everyday tasks.

What Are Fine Motor Skills?

Fine motor skills involve the ability to make small movements with the hands, fingers, and arms. Then, those actions are coordinated with the eyes. In order to hone these abilities, children need a certain amount of strength, dexterity, and control.

How do we use these skills in everyday life?

Here are a few activities require fine motor coordination:

• Getting dressed
• Feeding yourself
• Writing
• Using scissors
• Grooming
• Turning pages in a book
• Using a computer

Development of these skills helps children perform routine tasks. Furthermore, it predicts academic success. Research shows that working on fine motor skills early in life helps the brain make connections that support cognitive performance.

Related Read: Easy Fine Motor Skills Activities to Do at Home with Infants & Toddlers

Children with adept motor skills may navigate their environments better than other kids. This gives them experiences that set the stage for future learning. Some evidence shows that these skills are more important than memorizing letters or learning numbers for academic learning.

Fine Motor Skills for Toddlers

Toddlers have a chance to develop their small motor coordination every day. Being able to do activities that involve smaller muscles gives them more independence. Toddlers with strong development in this area can do tasks such as:

• Open doors
• Use a zipper
• Button their clothing
• Wash their hands
• Brush their teeth

Activities for Toddlers

Kids will need these skills once they are in school. Preparing toddlers by encouraging their dexterity can make them feel more comfortable in preschool and kindergarten. Some fine motor skills examples in the learning environment include:

• Gluing and pasting
• Drawing and coloring
• Building towers with blocks and other items
• Completing puzzles

Many of the activities that toddlers enjoy doing enhance these skills. Little ones that have an obsession with dumping out their toys are integrating different muscle movements. You can foster this by asking them to put the toys back in the bucket before spilling them out again.

You may notice that toddlers enjoy using their own utensils while eating. Although this use can be messy, it should be encouraged.

Be patient and try to avoid jumping in to help toddlers eat. Give them foods that are cut into small pieces and let them feed themselves with their hands. Doing this helps them develop the pincer grasp.

Ways to Improve Fine Motor Skill Development

Some children have problems building these skills. If they do, you might notice that they take a long time to draw or color a picture. They get tired quickly when working on a computer or writing. They have trouble cutting paper or don’t like tasks that require small movements.

You don’t have to give children tedious tasks such as writing or using scissors to improve fine motor skills development. In other words, other types of activities may be more engaging for certain age groups. For example, art projects, working with water, and certain kinds of directed play can give kids experience with coordination, grasping and pinching.

Activities great for strengthening include:

• Using a basting tool with water
• Squeezing water from sponges
• Sponge painting
• Pouring water from containers with different spouts
• “Fishing” for ping pong balls in a bathtub using a net

Other activities involve using toys with knobs, dials, latches, and switches. Similiarly, you can make your own toy by stuffing pieces of fabric in a baby wipe container. Little ones love pulling these out and stuffing them back in.

A car wash is another fine motor skills example that gives kids experience with tactile sensations. So, provide toy vehicles, washable paint, a tub of water, a cup, shaving cream, a toothbrush, and a spray bottle. Furthermore, kids can color the cars before cleaning them off.

As they get older, kids can practice sorting using rocks, beads, pom-poms or other small items. Make sure that they’re supervised so that they don’t put the items in their mouths. They can use their fingers, tweezers or chopsticks to move the objects into ice cube trays and other small containers.

If you’re worried that a child doesn’t have appropriate skill development in this area, occupational therapy can help. A professional can help you evaluate kids’ development and work with them to improve their strength and dexterity.

Fine Motor Skills in a Montessori Environment

Developing fine motor skills permeates practically every area of a Montessori learning environment.

Fine Motor Skills Examples

Practical Life Fine Motor Skills Activities

The real focus of fine motor skills development happens within the Practical Life area of the classroom. Here are a few examples of small motor activities that you can easily do at home.

• Pouring Dry Goods
• Wet Pouring
• Transfer of Dry Goods 
• Tweezing
• Card Sewing
• Bead Stringing
• Basting
• Button Dressing Frame
• Open & Close Tray
• Peeling Oranges
• Scissor Cutting

Fine Motor Skills Activities in a Montessori Environment

Many extensions to activities in a Montessori classroom involve tracing, pin poking, and scissor cutting exercises depending on the development of the child at that point. Examples within Montessori Geography include tracing continents and states, pin poking the continents maps, and cutting the continents and states maps.

Math is also a great way to incorporate development within this area. For instance, children work with small beads and counters, plus scissor cutting labels, and so on.

Metal Insets are a fantastic language work spanning the ages of an early childhood classroom. Younger kids can trace the templates and insets with colored pencils making beautiful designs. Older children can pin-poke to create designs. I adore how these activities combine art and language.

Related Read: How to Make a Geoboard with Your Kids

This is only a start to exploring fine motor skills development within a Montessori environment. Definitely check out my Practical Life posts for more authentic Montessori lessons within this topic.