As a third-grade teacher, I knew very little about fine-motor skills. For example, it never occurred to me to provide fine-motor exercises for children who clearly struggled to make their writing legible. I just thought they needed more writing practice or needed to write slower. Today I understand that these kiddos most likely would have benefited from a variety of age-appropriate fine-motor tasks, such as putting together puzzles, sculpting clay, and so on. Ugh! I feel so bad!
If you think your early (or established) writers could benefit from a fine-motor tune-up, check out the suggestions below. And for those of you who reinforce fine-motor skills on a daily basis, please describe your fine-motor favorites for us.
Always learning!
Diane
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Tips for Fine-Motor Tune-Ups 1. Weave placemats, baskets, and bracelets. |
Thanks for the tips. I teach kindergarten, and these ideas always help 🙂
My pre-k kids always enjoyed when I let them mix manipulative toys in with the playdoh such as marbles.
Marbles are easy to remove from the playdoh, but the children have fun covering the marbles up into the playdoh.
Also, I have found that working with sign language also helps with dexterity and can also be a lot of fun. aslpro.com can help you get started with simple words for your classroom.
I put out tongs, tweezers and strawberry hullers with cotton balls. That really gives those hand muscles and eyes a workout. You can also use pom poms and vary the size.
we also use tweezers with pompoms, acorn, cotton balls – painting with qtips is good.My kids favorite thing though is the lite brite. They just love it when that is out. I have sewn alot of shapes (Like a pumpkin or christmas tree – attach big buttons and then have the kids use felt cutouts with with a slice in the middle to practice buttoning. I have the kids sort skittles or m&ms (especially the tiny ones) onto mats and when they are done they get to eat them. this works great with lucky charms cereal too.
In my teaching years there was a continent rap in the mailbox magazine…I used it with my 4th graders and would like to use it with my daughter now…does anyone know where I can find it….
It starts like this…
Today we’re going to learn about the continents if you learn this rap it will be time well spent
With 7 continents and 6 chunks and of land Asia is found in the upper right hand..
That is the gist of it…Can anyone help me find the entire thing??
Thanks!!!
Cheryl 🙂
I draw 6 circles on manilla construction paper. I color the inside of each circle a different color. I laminate the paper. Next, I choose get 3-4 pom poms for each of the colors I used in the circles. The students use clip clothespins to sort the pom poms and put them in the appropriate circles. 🙂
I have the students string beads to work on their fine motor skills. I have several sets of alphabet beads bought at the dollar store and i have them spell some of their sight words for the kindergarten students who need an extra challenge.