Fine Motor Skill Fun!

Sweetie Pie baby H. is needing a little challenge in his life.
He is now 18 mo. old,
and wanting to grow!

So lately I have been doing a lot of fine motor skills activities.
(aka things that you do with your fingers.)

I did this activity kind of on the fly.
We had an baby snack container,
I rinsed out and cut a circle in the lid.

He loved putting different sized pom poms in the hole.

Then he opens the lid,

And dumps them out.

This is one of my favorite things to pull out

to keep him occupied while I'm cooking in the kitchen,

and can't give him my full attention.

This will keep his attention for about 10 minutes,

especially if I switch the items he puts in the container.

 

This next idea was a post nap time energizer.

All I did was to take some pipe cleaners

and got out my strainers and let them go to town.
The great part about fine motor skill activies is there is little explaining to do,
you just let them do what they creatively want to do.

Baby H. just loved sticking them in all of the holes.

Miss Sassy was much more precise,

So I decided to extend her learning,
I had her color sort beads and put them on the matching pipe cleaner.

Brilliant idea right? She got sick of the limitations,

And decided to put whatever color bead on that she wanted.

It was so great for her fine motor skills,
and because it was a little challenging,
so she really had to focus.

Another fine motor skill activity that I love
is putting fancy toothpicks into a sugar shaker.

He really loves to do this one too.
It is also a great occupier.

I found both of these things at all a dollar,
but really for how well it has helped lengthen his attention span,
it's been worth ten expensive educational toys.

Here is what it looks like from above:

He also had a blast poking the toothpicks into moon dough.

You can easily "theme" out your fine motor skills activities,

as we did with these heart sticks.

Putting an new spin on an oldie but a goodie
helps them stay excited about it!