Shop UK Site 
Fine Motor Skills for Preschoolers
- Patria Lincoln Posted On May 7, 2020 | Motor Skills
Fine motor skills are critical to a preschooler’s development. Like any skill, such as playing the piano or dribbling a basketball, practice is essential to success.
When preschool teachers mention fine motor skills, they are referring to the muscles in the hand that are used to manipulate small objects. Fine motor and hand eye coordination are typically parallel skills; most fine motor tasks require refined hand eye coordination. Hand eye coordination refers to the communication that happens between the hands and the eyes in order to accomplish a task.
We use fine motor skills in our everyday lives. Examples include: tying shoes (looping shoelaces through each other), getting dressed (buttons and zippers), eating dinner (using a fork or knife), and brushing teeth (squeezing toothpaste and brushing). In addition, kids will undoubtedly use fine motor skills at school as they write, color, cut, glue, and paint.
Not only is it important to develop fine motor skills for physical growth, but also to build confidence. The more children practice these skills, the more confident they will become. Mastering the coordination of putting on a winter coat, zipping, and buttoning it will make kids excited to go outside. Delaying practicing fine motor skills may have an adverse effect - a student who hasn’t learned to hold and move a pencil properly may make them frustrated during a writing lesson, or could lead to avoiding the task altogether.
While there are plenty of ways to practice fine motor skills around the house, children can also learn through playing with any of these Learning Resources products:
Sand and Water Fine Motor Tool Set
Modeling Independent Reading
Fostering a love of reading from an early age certainly boosts academic development, but also offers an opportunity for parents to connect with their children.
Classroom teachers often use the term ‘modeling’ when introducing a new skill or assignment. For example, if students are tasked with reading a sentence out loud, teachers will likely read aloud a sentence first so students can hear proper fluency. If students are writing a story in class, many teachers would write alongside their kids. The demonstration and commitment to practice is valuable to the learning process.
Whether your child is listening to a sibling read a board book, performing Shel Silverstein poetry for all to hear, or cuddled up with a chapter book on the couch, parents are encouraged to participate in this activity, too.
Learning Resources’ Reading Comprehension Cubes are a useful tool to spark discussion. The kit comes with six dice-like cubes with questions on each side. The red cubes list pre-reading questions, the blue cubes are for during reading, and the green cubes have post-reading prompts.
Examples: Red- “Predict what will happen in the story.”
Blue- “Where does the story take place?”
Green- “Summarize the story.”
Parents should take one cube of each color, and children should take the rest. While your child is independently reading, grab your book, too. Set a timer for 10 minutes while you both read silently. When the timer goes off, roll a cube. If the question is about the main character, you can share who the main character in your novel is, just like your child will describe the main character in their novel. Using familiar vocabulary such as “setting” or “conflict” will teach your child that stories have general characteristics. 
There are potentially three different types of reading skills that children may be practicing when they are reading at home: reading aloud, reading silently, and listening to reading. The Reading Comprehension Cubes can help improve and test children’s understanding within the different modalities. For example, a child may be able to clearly explain the conflict while they are listening to a story, but not when they are reading aloud. This would imply that more reading aloud and checks for comprehension would help strengthen that skill.
The Reading Comprehension Cubes can also be used as writing prompts. Instead of discussing, children can roll the dice, read the prompt, write their response, and then share what they wrote.
By adopting into your routine at least 20 minutes of reading each day, children are not only becoming stronger readers, but also stronger writers and thoughtful thinkers. They are witnessing firsthand how a story begins and ends, introduces characters, and develops settings. In addition, they will begin recognizing that the beginning of each sentence starts with a capital letter. The skills of reading and writing go hand in hand. Finally, they are learning to articulate their thoughts, ask insightful questions, and have a meaningful discussion.
Modeling independent reading demonstrates a lifelong love of literature.
READ MORE
Developmental Activities to Fill your Easter Baskets!
Infants
This is the perfect opportunity to fill up their baskets with some sensory stimulating play items! Infants love looking in the mirror, and the All About Me Mirroris the perfect size to prop up in front of them as they get their tummy time in for the day. It is also the perfect size to take on the go for some developmentally stimulating play during restaurant, park, and shopping outings!
18Months – 2 Years
There is a TON of development that occurs between 18 months and 2 years, but often times you can continue to use the same toy throughout this time – just with a little adaptation as they develop more advanced skills. Some of the things this age group really enjoys are open/close concepts (containers, pots, pants, etc) – the Peakaboo Learning Farm is a fun way to engage them in color concepts, open and close, animals, as well as number concepts. The animals also turn into finger puppets which is a great way to work on finger and hand muscle development.
2-3 yrs
The “I’LL DO IT!” stage! These kiddo’s seemingly want to do EVERYTHING themselves. For this age group, I recommend activities that include lots of opportunities for independently succeeding in a task. Plastic Easter eggs that have patterns or designs so that they can find and match pairs, small bubble sets that allow their little finger to hold and blow themselves, small crayons for their small hands, chalk for outdoor play and building up those foundational handwriting skills, Alphabet Blocks are great for color identification, fine motor coordination, as well as for simple letter recognition tasks – I recommend starting with the letters of their name so that they can visually recognize their name when they start school. Peg Friends Stacking Farm is a fun way to encourage visual motor integration as well as early building and matching skills.
3-4 yrs
This age group we look at a lot of the school readiness skills. Some of the activities that I really like are fine motor strengthening skills and the Froggy Feeding Fun game provides lots of opportunities to increase intrinsic hand muscles by squeezing the froggys mouth open. As they approach 4, the Alphabet Acorns game is great for letter recognition, visual perceptual tasks, as well as more advanced find motor coordination! Try adding the letters into a sensory bin for some added visual figure-ground searching skills.
5-7 yrs
For this age group, activities that have academically pertinent tasks built into a fun game is always a sure hit! Sight Word SWAT turns sight words into a fun fly swatting game. Try placing the words on both horizontal and vertical surfaces. Or you can even hide them around the room for some added visual scanning skills. The whole family can join in on the fun making it an engaging and fun task to learn new words. Penguins on Ice turns math concepts into a fun activity using colorful penguins as manipulatives which is great for fine motor practice as well. If your 5-7’s have younger siblings, this is a fun activity for the young kiddos as well – instead of practicing math concepts, they can build patterns, work on color recognition, or even just simple fine motor manipulation!
8+ years
For the 8+ year old’s, on- the- go activities are always great as these kiddo’s tend to have busier schedules and limited “play” time. Mental Box Go! is a great visual perceptual thinking game for any downtime. Easy to carry with you and play anywhere, anytime! Geoboards are also a fun, easy activity to set up. Use rubber bands to create shapes, patterns, designs, etc. These activities also provide lots of opportunity for social participation and engagement such as problem solving together which is a great developmental skill.
READ MORE
