Fine Motor Skills- What's the Fuss?

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What are fine motor skills and why is it so important?

Fine motor skills are basically the use of the small muscles in the fingers, the muscles you use to do all kinds of tasks like opening a bottle, doing your buttons and writing!
Imagine life without fingers, you will not be able to function as you do. For kids it is important to exercise those muscles in the pre school years to be able to learn to write once in school. If a child does not have control over these muscles, he/she will find it difficult to have control over a pencil and in essence to learn to write.

From babytime a child has to develop fine motor skills. Between the age of 3-4 months babies start bringing things that is put in their hands to their mouths to explore, by 4 months they will try and pick up an item by raking it closer to them with their arms and the whole hand. By month 5 baby will rake items with the four fingers, without much help of the thumb. Only around month 6/7 they start trying to pick up small items with the help of the thumb.

You can help by giving small pieces of safe finger foods to baby to pick up sitting in the feeding chair.

Some ideas:

– cereals like rice krispies or cheerios

– small pieces of cheese(grated works well)

– small pieces of pasta or rice

– small soft fruit pieces

– egg, pieces of meat

– small pieces of bread

By 8 months, place these small food in a small container/cup where baby must take it out by only using his/her thumb and forefinger. Another activity is to stick a big sticker on baby’s hand and show him how to pull it of.

Show your 9 month old baby how to slide an item into a slot, like this:

Make it yourselves with any tub or box, I like to use see through items, but any tub like an empty margerine tub will work. I taped around the slot, just to prevent any cuts.

With a toddler/preschooler you can help develop those fine motor skills through arts and craft activities like these:

The basic rule here is, the younger the child, the bigger the item, for example: use a bigger bead for a 3 year old than for a 6 year old, thicker brush for younger children, thinner brush for older kids etc.

Also keep in mind your childs ability to concentrate, do not expect a 3 year old to concentrate for longer than around 20 minutes. Let the child lead the activity, rather stop a while and come back to the activity later, than frustrating yourself and your child.

You can see more fine motor ideas if you search FINE MOTOR SKILLS in the search bar.

Also see this great resource(link on the image for details)!