Pincer grasp...having fun while learning too!

Little hands busy at work! During our Craft/Activity time there is something that the children work on to practice their fine motor skills. Here they are woring to string beads and cut up straws unto a ribbon to make a necklace. By practicing their fine motor skills and using their "pincer grasp" using their 2nd and 3rd fingers and thumb, they are working to train their hands on grasping pencils and really perfecting their pre-writing skills. Learning to write comes way before actually taking a pencil, crayon, or other medium in our hands and working hard to write a letter of the alphabet.

To help your child work on their fine motor skills - have them do activities that work on using these 3 fingers (again their 2nd and 3rd fingers and their thumb). Such activities would be cutting out paper with child scissors, pasting the paper or any other sort of medium onto paper with a glue stick or regular glue. Also picking up and placing small items in an art project - such as Perler beads, stringing beads onto a necklace, and picking up other small items to glue onto a picture. This is fun for your child and a great art project....and they are practicing essential skills at the same time! Another fun part of this activity is that I stretch it to teach patterns - something that the children continue to work on, but we focused on simple patterns for this necklace such as a repeating A-B-A-B, OR AA-BB-AA-BB pattern. It is also a great way to talk about colors....learning really has endless possibilities in the activities we do with our children!