WHAT IS A FINE MOTOR ACTIVITY?
Fine motor skills are the movements your child makes using their small muscles, like those found in the fingers and wrists. When they pick up a bean and put it in a cup, they are using those fine motor skills. Fine motor activities are the activities that focus on developing those more precise movements and help your child strengthen their hand-eye coordination.
The other day I ordered some new weights and they arrived packaged in these large styrofoam blocks. I knew immediately what I wanted to do with them.
If you give a little boy a hammer…he is going to hit things. Might as well make an activity out of it.
Hammering golf tees into styrofoam is such a simple and fun fine motor activity that takes very little prep on the parents part.
This activity is great for enhancing that hand-eye coordination as they have to focus to hit the hammer to the tee.
What you need for this fine motor activity:
Kids Play Hammer/Mallet (could also use a wooden block)
What to do:
Stick the tees into the styrofoam (or let your kiddo help you) and show them how to hammer away.
Don’t have styrofoam? Let them hammer into the ground outside!
Variations for older children:
1. Draw circles on the styrofoam and have your child hammer the tee into the circle.
2. Draw colored dots on the styrofoam and colored dots onto the tops of the tees, have your child match up the colors. Hammer the green tee into the green dot, etc.
3. Write the letters of the alphabet onto the styrofoam and have your child hammer into the letters of their name or maybe spelling words.
4. Write letters onto the styrofoam, call out one random letter at a time and have your child search for that letter and hammer into it.
5. Do the above activity with numbers.