Fine Motor ideas for small groups
Warm up activities for 5-10 mins:
Activities to increase hand strength:
Activities to develop skilled hand use:
Activities to increase internal timing:
- Stencils, paper and pencils on the floor or held on a wall. Child will bear weight in arms or use stabilization to hold the stencil while drawing or tracing.
- Provide rulers and paper and encourage drawing straight lines. Activity can be unstructured or structured, e.g. the student is asked to draw the vertical lines to form the vertical bars of a lion's cage, or the horizontal rungs on a ladder.
- Catch and toss activities with small bouncy balls.
- Color or draw on a paper on the underside of a table. Have the student hold the paper up or tape it up.
- Provide a box of large bolts and nuts and have the students screw the nuts onto the bolts.
- Provide a box of assorted jars and jar lids of various sizes and have students match them up and screw the lids on the jars. Observing an activity like this can often give a clue to which is the student's dominant hand, hand strength and coordination skills.
- Students stand next to desk, extend arms and make ten circles forward and ten circles backward.
- Standing, extend arms straight up and make a "windshield wiper" movement, crossing one arm in front of the other. Do ten "swipes", then switch the front arm to the back, and the back arm to the front and do ten more.
- Standing, place palms together at chest level and do a "chest press" pressing palms together as hard as possible, for a count of twenty.
- Standing, bring hands together at chest level and point one thumb up and one thumb down. Curl fingers and hook fingers from left hand into fingers of right and pull, for a count of twenty.
- Do desk "push-ups" by placing hands flat on desk, elbows straight, and press down on desk as hard as possible. Some students may be able to lift themselves slightly off of floor. Do ten.
- Standing or seated, touch pad of thumb to pad of index, middle, ring, and little fingers in succession, do five repetitions. Try this activity with hands next to ears so that students have to rely on proprioceptive and kinesthetic cues instead of vision.
- Standing or seated, touch pad of thumb to pads of index and middle fingers. Extend fingers so that web space between thumb and index is almond shaped; call this "cats eyes. Keeping fingertips pressed together, flex fingers and make web space into a circular shape; call this "owl's eyes". Alternate between cat's eyes and owl's eyes about ten times.
- Seated, give each student a handful of cheerios, raisins, or mini-marshmallows. Instruct the students to pick up the objects one at a time, using only the tips of the thumb, index, and middle fingers. Once the first object is in the palm, shift it over to the ring and little finger side of the hand and hold it there. Continue to gather, shift and hold at least five objects, then shift them back to the fingertips one-by-one and place them back on the desk. Eat when finished. Can also be done with pennies or bingo markers.
- Once seated, do ten chair push-ups, placing hands on seat of chair next to thighs and straighten elbow to lift buttocks slightly off of chair seat.
- Do a chair "pull-up", pulling chair up to desk until student is just able to slip their flat palm between their stomach and the front of the desk. Encourage students to think of their body as a pile of blocks that must be carefully stacked: back straight, hips against the back of the chair, feet under knees. Once children are familiar with the position, teacher should be able to use the term "stack your blocks".
Activities to increase hand strength:
- Provide a container of hand toys which can be squeezed; include foam balls, flour or rice filled balloons (stress balls), anything "squishy".
- Provide several paper punches and a variety of thicknesses and types of colored paper.
- Use spring-loaded wooden clothespins and instruct the student to place their thumb on one side of the clothespin and their index and middle fingers on the other side (a tripod position). Some suggested activities: write the letters of the alphabet on the clothespins and around the perimeter of a shoebox. Have the students pinch the clothespins onto the box at the matching letter. Numbers could be used as well as letters. Have the students use the clothespins to pick up small objects. One suggested activity is to cut small cubes, (1/3-1/2") out of foam rug padding and use the clothespins to pick up the foam cubes. Letters or numbers can be written on the foam with a fine-line permanent marker. Try to make sure the students maintain a tripod grasp on the clothespin.
- Silly putty, theraputty, playdough, etc.
- Crumple paper of varying thickness
- Rip cardboard or poster board into letters
Activities to develop skilled hand use:
- Provide several yard-long pieces of wax string, yarn with a tapped end, or round plastic lacing (boondoggle), as well as drinking straws of different diameters, including the narrow ones that are often used for stirring drinks. Have the child hold the straw in his non-dominant hand and use the thumb and index finger of the preferred hand to feed the string into one end of the drinking straw until the string is completely pushed through.
- Use regular tweezers to pick up or position small objects. Tweezers should be held in a tripod grasp with thumb on one side and index and middle fingers on the other side. Can be used in conjunction with paper punch activities, using the tweezers to pick up the small circles left by the punch. Glue the small circles on paper to create a pattern or picture. Consider "science" type activities which could be performed using tweezers.
- Provide small medicine droppers and small containers of colored water (water with a drop of tempera paint). Encourage students to hold the top of the dropper between thumb, index, and middle fingers and release one drop of water at a time onto a coffee filter or paper towel. Could also count how many drops of water it would take to fill a very small container, such as a medicine dosage cup.
- Encourage students to hold scissors properly. The thumb and middle finger should be placed in the loops no farther than the first joint; the index finger should be under the scissors, helping to stabilize them in a vertical position. This is most easily achieved when the student is using scissors with small equal-sized loops. If one loop is larger than the other, the index and middle fingers can be placed in the larger loop. The index and middle fingers should be relatively flexed as the student cuts, and the ring and little fingers should be flexed and still. Cutting is a good activity to help the child achieve motoric separation in the hand. This is a higher-level skill whereby the child uses the thumb, index, and middle fingers to perform a skilled activity while the ring and middle fingers perform a holding function, or are at rest. This separation of the hand is also seen when the student is able to use a mature tripod grasp on a writing instrument.
Activities to increase internal timing:
- Timed strokes for stroke speed
- Metronome games and activities
- Dribbling and juggling tasks
- Catch and toss with patterns