Developing Fine Motor Skills in Kids

Fine motor skills include the ability of fingers and toes to perform precise and coordinated actions. Nervous and muscular systems, as well as sight, are responsible for fine motor skills.

Why Is It Important to Develop Fine Motor Skills?

With age, the number of operations that require the development of the child’s fine motor skills will grow. These operations include writing, the ability to play some musical instrument, typing on the keyboard, sewing, knitting, assembling and disassembling of small mechanisms, and many other things. In addition, it has been proved that the development of fine hand movements in children directly affects the speed and quality of language acquisition and the formation of some properties of thinking (logic, imagination). If a child does not speak for a long time or speaks in a wrong way, it is necessary to develop fine motor skills. How can one do it?

Finger Games Develop Dexterity

In a broad sense, “finger” games include all of the exercises aimed at developing the child’s fine motor skills. One can start to play with the baby in the first months of life – it will not only help develop fine motor skills, but will also enrich its communication with parents.

Finger Games to Play – Examples

You can try the following finger games with your child if you want to develop fine motor skills:

Collecting buttons (from 9-12 months, depending on when the child ceases to pull them into the mouth)

This is a finger game for kids, which also contributes to the development of logic and abstract thinking, helps the child to study the characteristics of objects. Find buttons of different colors, mix them together in one pile, and then begin to sort them together with your baby – red ones will go to one box, white buttons – to another, and brown buttons – to the third box, etc.

A ball in a spoon (from the age of 11-12 months – when the child is able to walk confidently enough)

This game develops the child’s accuracy and the sense of balance. In addition, in the course of this game, the child is learning to deal with a spoon. To play this game, one will need a spoon (a not very small one), and a ball that rolls around in the spoon pretty freely. The task of the baby is to take the ball with the spoon from any surface, walk with it around the apartment without dropping the ball.

Tie bows on a doll (from 12-18 months)

During this finger game, the kid learns to tie shoe laces, ribbons, etc. Take the kid’s favorite doll (or a stuffed toy), sew 5-6 ribbons and laces to its clothing pieces (which suit the colors of clothing), and start to tie them together with your child.

Shadow Theatre (from the age of 2 years)

Be sure to include this wonderful old game as well as other educational games for 2-year-old children – it helps to develop imagination and artistic skills. It can be played like this: the main light in the room is switched off, and a point source of light is turned on and directed at the wall. Between the wall and the light source one puts a hand and watches the shadows, changing the position of the fingers to create fantastic figures. Then one can encourage the child to repeat it. Thus, one can have a true performance – the parents’ and the child’s hands will play as actors.

Other Tips to Attain Fine Motor Skills

Starting with the age of one year, one can teach the child to draw and sculpt (use safe and age-appropriate materials). First, the child’s “works” will have no artistic value, of course, but after a few months the kid’s movements will become more refined and confident, and at about the age of two years it will start to create something more meaningful. In order to develop fine motor skills, the child can also be taught to play a musical instrument – a synthesizer, xylophone, and guitar.

If you do not have time to teach your child specifically, the baby will learn to play with toys, eat and dress on its own – all of this trains fine motor skills. The smaller these items are and the more sophisticated operations one has to perform, the better the child’s development of fine motor skills is.

Finger Massage for Children

If you think that your child’s fine motor skills are developed too bad for his age, and all the activities described above are of no particular interest to him, you can massage his fingers and palms. Its main principle is the same as with “finger” games – to massage each finger (especially the finger pillows), moving them and massaging the hands clockwise.