25 Fun and Helpful Fine Motor Activities For Preschoolers

Examples Of Fine Motor Skills For Preschoolers & Toddlers

Accomplishing essential everyday tasks like feeding themselves and getting dressed requires fine muscle control. For example, your child’s hands must be strong enough to open a door, button a coat, zip up their pants, or hold a glass of milk.

Other small motor skills for preschoolers may include:

Fine Motor Activities For Toddlers & Preschoolers

Note: Several of these materials and activities are not for children who still put things in their mouths. Some of the activities use small items that can be considered a choking hazard. Close adult supervision is always recommended. Please know your child and use the materials and activities at your own discretion.

Getting your preschoolers and toddlers involved in fine motor activities is simple with fun, fine motor materials. You might consider creating a fine motor skills “kit” so you will be prepared for fine motor development activities at any time.

When assembling motor coordination activities, think:

Playdough Activities For Fine Motor Skills

Playdough is, hands down (pun intended), one of the most versatile fine motor materials. You can build, chop, cut, rake, score, shred, flatten, and roll it. It builds hand strength when they squash, squeeze, twist, poke, push, and pull. It includes a tactile experience while developing hand-eye coordination.

Your child can practice two-handed tasks (coordinating two hands together) by rolling playdough into a long rope. Also, they can stick straws, poke beads, and push pasta into it. How about squeezing playdough through a garlic press or citrus juicer?

To further strengthen their small muscles for better fine motor control, why not make your own playdough? Mixing and kneading it requires a lot of hand strength.

There are many tools you can add to expand the playdough fun. Just look around the house!

Block Play Activities & Fine Motor Development

The benefits of block play are many, one being fine motor development. Block activities like stacking blocks require fine motor control and hand-eye coordination. Your child uses and strengthens their wrists, hands, fingers, and thumb while balancing the blocks.

Blocks are well-loved and come in various materials, sizes, shapes, and colors for all ages. For example, magnetic play and magnetic building blocks are perfect for introducing your toddler to fine motor development. Wooden toy blocks are ideal for building fine motor coordination. Once your child has some success with their fine motor control, you can add snap-together blocks like blocks for toddlers.

Let’s look at some fine motor activities for toddlers and preschoolers using blocks.

Block Transfer

Have your child transfer the blocks from one area to a container using tongs, spoon, spatula, or fingers (practicing the pincer grasp).

After picking up the blocks, they move them from the floor to an egg carton, muffin tin, cookie sheet, or bowl. You can vary the tools and containers based on your child’s skill level, increasing the difficulty as their fine motor control progresses.

Some sample combinations to try:

• Move the blocks to a cookie sheet with a spatula.
• Pick up blocks with the pincer grasp and put them in the egg carton.
• Scoop blocks into the bowl with a spoon.
• Transfer blocks to a muffin tin with tongs.

Big Building Blocks & Clothespins

Grab a set of building blocks for toddlers and some clothespins. If you have colored ones that match the block colors, that is even better. Now flip the blocks upside down and have your toddler clip the clothespins onto the blocks’ edge. If you want to incorporate color matching, have them attach the pins to the matching blocks. Otherwise, just grasping, pinching, and placing the pins strengthens the pincer grip and small motor development.

Fine Motor Painting Activities

Nothing says express yourself better than some finger-paints and a large sheet of paper! Whether painting with their fingers, paintbrush, sponges, pipettes, cotton balls, or Q-Tips, they are building fine motor coordination.

Finger-Painting

What toddler doesn’t love finger painting? All that messy gooey material squishing between their fingers. What could be better than that? Here you will want to encourage your child to get in there and really use their fingers to build finger strength. Try using different materials each time. For example, besides paint, try shaving cream, pudding, jello, or any other messy non-toxic medium.

Painting With Small Sponges

This activity focuses on the pincer grasp while encouraging creativity. You will cut up some sponges into tiny pieces: the smaller the sponges, the more difficult the activity. Cut them to fit the level of your child. You want them to practice their skills but not get frustrated and give up! Then just let them paint away.

Q-Tip Painting

This painting activity is based on a specific style of art known as “pointillism.” Toddlers and younger preschoolers will simply paint with a Q-Tip or cotton swab instead of a paintbrush. However, older preschoolers can use a cotton swab to paint dots forming shapes and objects. Either option requires fine motor coordination to grasp the cotton swab and control the art’s small movements.

Squeeze Painting

Fill up some small squeeze bottles or pipettes with watered-down paint. Thin it according to the way you will use it. For example, watercolors squeezed from the pipettes and dropped on paper towels or coffee filters make a beautiful watercolor paper that they could use in another project.

However, squeezing paint from a bottle onto pine cones requires a thicker consistency. It can be dripped or squeezed out in a steady stream. Either way, they will be using their fine motor skills. By the way, your child can glue pom-poms and beads to painted pine cones to create a “Christmas Tree” for the holidays. Check out all these other Christmas Activities for a festive holiday season!

Fine Motor Skills Activities With Clothespins

Clothespins are another excellent material for building finger strength the kids will love! Spring-loaded clothespins also hone in on pincer grasp strength. Have your kids practice by hanging their artwork or other items on a clothesline.

Clothespin Clip

In this activity, your child will clip clothespins to sponges or cardboard pieces. Cut up some clean kitchen sponges or colored cardboard into smaller pieces. You can cut them all into squares or different shapes—for example, squares, circles, rectangles, triangles, diamonds, and more. Then have your child clip the clothespin to the edge of the sponge or cardboard.

Fine Motor Activities With Pipe Cleaners

Pipe cleaners are great for fine motor development. These seemly simple items can be bent, pushed, poked, and threaded.

Pipe Cleaners, Colanders & Boxes, Oh My!

A motor activity that is simple with lots of variations. Here the skill is pushing and poking the pipe cleaner into or through various holes.

Empty Box

Punch holes in the lid and let your child insert the pipe cleaners into the box’s holes. You could also use straws, dried spaghetti, wooden dowels, or toothpicks.

Colander

Give your child a strainer and a stack of pipe cleaners, then watch them explore. They can push the pipe cleaners through the holes from the outside in or the inside out. They may bend them so both ends go through a hole to make a loop.

Pipe Cleaner Sculptures

Pipe cleaners are soft and easily shaped. Keep an eye on the ends, which may be sharp! You can bend the tips over before giving them to your child to sculpt. Preschoolers can create shapes, letters, or numbers.

Hand Strengthening Activities For Kids

Tongs and tweezers are perfect for working on fine motor control. They build up hand strength and prepare children for scissors skills. Also, transferring small items with tongs or tweezers requires a lot of hand-eye coordination. While easier to squeeze, tweezers require more hand-eye coordination to successfully move one object to another place. On the other hand, Tongs are larger but require a lot of control and hand strength to maneuver.

Sorting Activities With Small Items

For this activity, you can try sorting a variety of small items. Choose one at a time. You will also need a tool to move the elements and a collection container. Mix and match, selecting one tool, one small item, and a collection container.

Suggested transfer tools: Tongs, tweezers, spoons, or fingers

Recommended collection containers: Egg cartons, empty water bottles, muffin tins, paint palettes, ice cube trays, small jars, cups, or bowls

Suggested small items to sort: Pom poms, beads, buttons, marbles, cereal (i.e., Cheerios or Froot Loops), candy (i.e., Skittles), crayons, candles, toothpicks, small blocks, cotton balls are all fantastic for working on fine motor movements that grasp, pick up and move them.

Use your imagination; the combinations are endless. However, we gave you a few ideas to get started:

• Transfer pom-poms to an egg carton with tweezers.
• Move pom-poms to a muffin tin with tongs.
• Spoon marbles into small jars.
• Sort beads with their fingers into a paint palette.
• Transfer cereal to an ice cube tray with loop-ended tweezers.
• Spoon buttons into small cups.

Fine Motor Activities Using Office Supplies

Who knew that household office supplies could be so helpful with fine motor development? See some of the creative ways to use them to build your preschooler’s fine motor skills.

Paper clip Chain

Here is an activity that is super easy to set up. Grab a bowl of paper clips (colored ones are preferable) and let the kids clip them together into a chain necklace or other shapes. Paper clips are ideal for pincer grasp activities, hand-eye coordination, and building finger strength. Plus, the kids will love wearing the finished creation. Additionally, your child can clip paper clips to colored index cards.

Paper Hole Punch

Another simple activity that requires enormous amounts of hand and finger strength. Kids will love it, but punching holes with a hole punch will be challenging for your child. In addition to punching paper, they can punch holes in old greeting cards and then use the cards to practice lacing. Let them practice often but plan to help them.

Paper Tearing

Simple paper activities like folding or tearing paper build fine motor skills.

Rubber Band Fine Motor Activities

Elastics or rubber bands are finger-strength building materials perfect for fine motor activities. They develop strength when stretching them around objects. There is a multitude of ways to use them for all skill levels. Why not try a few of these?

• Larger rubber bands around cans or cut-up pool noodles.
• Stretch a variety of rubber bands around pine cones or sticks.
• Large bands can wrap around upside-down muffin tins as makeshift geoboards.
• Small colorful elastics work well around craft sticks.

Stickers Collage

Stickers are the best. Preschoolers and toddlers love them! You can use stickers to create a collage or a scene. Peeling the stickers off the sticker sheet is an excellent fine motor activity but tricky. It requires fine motor control to peel them off and then place them on the paper.

Tape Peeling

Here you will need a roll of painter’s, washi, masking, or another colorful tape safe for your surface. You will want to be sure to test it in a hidden spot before using tape.

This motor activity can be done outside on a picnic table or on a large smooth surface. Windows, whiteboards, chalkboards, or floors work well.

Basically, you lay down strips of tape in various lengths going in different directions. Now let the kids go at it, peeling up the tape. They will be using their pincer grasp to grab the edges and building hand strength too! They can create pictures, peel them off, and stick them back on.

Fine Motor Activities For Preschoolers – Hand Sewing

Sewing for older preschoolers is a wonderful way to engage them in fine motor development skills. Not only are these activities beneficial for developing fine motor skills in preschoolers, but they can be helpful in the future. Start small and simple with just a few activities and build from there.

• They can sew large buttons to the canvas with yarn.
• Try drawing shapes on the canvas for them to sew along.

You may even want to create a little sewing basket of their own. Here are a few recommended supplies to get started.

Besides learning to hand sew, your child can practice yarn wrapping or weaving.

Weaving For Preschoolers

Weaving activities can be completed using paper, yarn, ribbons, or fabric strips. Weave them through and around pine cones, baskets, railings, or a toddler’s gate. Try making a loom from craft sticks. You could even go outside and weave through the fence.

Preschool Cutting Activities That Pair Perfectly With Sewing

Scissor skills do not come easy to preschoolers. They need a lot of practice to get it right, and the best way to do this is to CUT, CUT, and CUT SOME MORE!

Scissor Skills Activity

They can cut up paper, magazines, or junk mail and make a collage. If this seems too difficult, have them cut up straws, which take a quick snip. Then come back to the paper once they have mastered the quick snip.

Threading Activities Fine Motor Skills

Threading packs a powerful punch when it comes to fine motor development. When pushing and pulling, your child strengthens their hand and finger muscles. Picking up small objects builds the pincer grasp. Be creative and let the kids get threading! With an unlimited combination of materials, the possibilities are endless.

Threading activities

Here is a fine motor activities list to develop fine motor coordination:

• Big beads on tipped yarn (finish the edge with duct tape, or use purchased tipped yarn pieces).
• Cereal circles (think Cheerios or Froot Loops) on tipped yarn.
• Pasta tubes (dried) on tipped yarn.
• Straw pieces (like beads) on tipped yarn.
• Buttons on pipe cleaners.
• Keys on pipe cleaners.
• Pasta tubes (dried) on pipe cleaners.
• Pony beads on pipe cleaners.
• Pasta tubes (dried) on a ribbon.
• Pony beads on colored feathers.
• Q-Tips through straws.
• Straw pieces (like beads) on shoelaces to make a necklace.

Fine Motor Skills Activities With Pool Noodles

While not explicitly connected to the above water play, we definitely think of them in conjunction with water.

Pool Noodle Activities

Pool noodles can be used for various tasks, like making obstacle courses. However, we are going to cut them up for some fine motor activities. You will cut them into 1″ and 2″ lengths.

• Place cut side up and balance large pom poms on top.
• Cut up the noodles and add them to your block center.
• With the holes facing up, sort and transfer small pom poms to fill the centers.
• Thread 1″ pieces on ribbon, yarn, or string.

Fine Motor Skills Activities For Toddlers & Preschoolers

Fine Motor Skill Development & Daily Activities

Helping is the name of the game for toddlers and preschoolers. We put together a fine motor activity list that your child can do to “help” and build their fine motor coordination.

• Put away their blocks and toys.
• Use silverware to eat.
• Pour their own milk into a cup.
• Set the table.
• Clear their dishes.
• Wipe the table with a sponge.
• Mix, stir, or shake to help with meal prep.
• Dress themselves using buttons, zippers, and snaps.
• Put on their shoes with velcro tabs.

Pincer Grasp Development & Scarves

To help your youngest toddlers learn to pick up small things, fill an empty, clean, wipes container with scarves or large fabric scraps. Then let your child grab and pull them out of the box.

Sing Songs With Hand Motions

Your child’s small hand muscles need repetitive, fine motor movements to improve coordination and dexterity. Finger songs are a perfect match for targeting fine motor movements like finger isolation, finger stretching, pincer grasp, forearm rotation, and many more.

Try some of these other songs with finger and hand motions:

• Baby Shark
• Slippery Fish
• Where is Thumbkin?
• Wheels On The Bus