Two Activities to Boost Fine Motor & Visual Skills

Fine motor skills are important for handwriting, coloring, handling utensils, managing clothing and play skills. Visual skills are used every day to distinguish objects from one another, place things in memory and to attend to a visual stimulus for a period of time.

These fun activities promote movement and control of the fingers, hand eye coordination and matching skills.

Suggested Materials:

• Paper
• Clothespins
• Cardboard
• Clear tape
• Markers
• Small items (erasers shown below)

Activity 1: Cardboard Wheel

This activity uses clothespins to work on separating the sides of the hand, an important fine motor consideration. The thumb, index and middle fingers are considered the working side of the hand in order to manipulate objects. The ring finger and pinky are for stabilizing the hand during tasks. Using a marker to draw/write shapes, letters and numbers on the cardboard, your child can draw/write those same shapes, letters and numbers on clothespins. Opening/closing clothespins encourages the separation of the hand, builds hand strength and your child can focus on matching the symbols together (as shown in the picture).

Activity 2: Picture Matching

Another neat way to work on fine motor and visual skills, along with cognitive and motor functioning, would be to take pictures of small items around your house, such as erasers, action figures, etc. Put all of these pictures on one document and print it. You can even laminate the printed page or cover it with tape to keep it safe for future use. Your child can then match the physical items to the corresponding pictures. To incorporate tool use, have your child pick up the items with a clothespin and place each on top of the picture. To incorporate handwriting, have your child cross off each item with a marker and/or have them write the first letter of each item, such as a “B” for the bat eraser, on top of the item as a way to cross those off.