Friday 21 October 2022

Helping your child to strengthen their fine motor skills

Fine motor skills, what are they? This is the use of the small muscles in our hands, wrists, fingers, feet and toes. Fine motor skills involve movement of small muscles in your child’s body that requires the brain to coordinate between the action and what is being seen. Fine motor skills can impact simple activities such as using a fork to and using a pencil to write. They start to develop and strengthen as your child uses the muscles more and more. Some of the best ways to develop these muscles is by learning how to grasp, hold, press and use pincer grips. But what makes them so important? These skills will ensure that your child will be able to complete daily activities such as buttoning up his shirt and tying their own shoe laces. You'll find that your child’s self-confidence and ability is affected too. Here is some advice from a boarding school in the South East on helping a child to strengthen their fine motor skills.

Indulge in tactile play by using old favourite materials such as playdough. This is a great way for children to experiment and build on those fine motor skills. To make this even more interesting, you can make the play dough from scratch with your child before they play with it. They can colour it however they want. If you are interested, there are plenty of easy to follow tutorials on YouTube.

Do puzzles together. Completing puzzles means your child will have to understand and develop their pincer grasp. It may be frustrating sometimes watching them pick up the pieces and put them in their mouth or give up easily. However, try and stick at it and engage with your child as much as you can. The first one will always be difficult but as they progress, so will their skills. 

Draw and colour together. This not only helps their fine motor skills but improves that creativity and imagination. Allow your child to try different types of drawing and colouring methods which not only will spark their interest, but help strengthen their fine motor skills overall.

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