Fine Motor Activities

Yesterday we were talking about our April calendar and the reason we have an umbrella as our calendar date is because normally there is a lot of rain in the month of April, not snow!   So here we are in the month of April with a snow day.  Craziness!  I decided to post some fun indoor activities you can do with your child to help build their fine motor skills and keep them occupied when the weather keeps us indoors.  Hope they help make your indoor days a little brighter!

1.  Play with play-dough.  If you don't have any play-dough at hand there are a lot of great recipes to make play-dough online as well.  While playing with play-dough they can work on their sight words by rolling out the different letters and then reading the word.  Here is a recipe I found online:
https://theimaginationtree.com/best-ever-no-cook-play-dough-recipe/

2.  Use tweezers to pick up different objects.  Tweezers are a great tool to help build fine motor skills.  They force your child to use their pointer, middle, and thumb fingers (which are the same fingers they use while writing).  Find different objects around your house to have them pick up and put in a bowl (beads, rice, or cereal are great small objects).  Also, if you have an egg carton your child can count objects into each egg slot.
If you don't have tweezers you can use clothes pins as well.  

3.  Use hole punches and scissors to cut scrap paper.  Kids LOVE to play with hole punches and scissors.  The best part is they don't have to have any special paper.  They just need the freedom to cut or punch holes in paper.  I usually use junk mail or paper scraps and put them into a big cardboard box.  I'm a bit of a neat freak so to keep my sanity I say they have to keep all the paper in the box.  That way they're having fun and I'm not losing my mind over the mess. 

4.  Play puzzles and card games.  Go-Fish and Top It (War) are great card games that your child can play.  Not only can you have a fun family time but they can practice their number recognition as well.  Its a win-win :). 

5.  Water bottle fun.  Get a tub and water bottle and have your child squirt the water bottle into the tub.  If you want to make use of this fresh snow you can go get a ball of snow and put it in the tub.  Then have the children squirt colored water at the snow ball and make different designs.

6.  Writing with Shaving Cream.  Pull out the shaving cream and squirt some on the table.  Then spread it out and let your child write or draw pictures with their fingers.  This is also a fun way to write sight words and numbers!

I hope these ideas are helpful and make being stuck indoors a little more enjoyable!