Fine Motor Skills : 18 - 36 months

Fine motor skills are an important part in the development of a child. These skills involve the use of small muscles that control the hand, fingers and thumb. From some of the basic activities to more complex ones are based on these skills. Tying a shoe lace, using scissors to cut something in shape etc are all based on these skills.

Although these skills self develop in children during their early years, parents can definitely play a great role in helping the children develop these skills by designing certain easy activities. These activities will basically focus on developing the child's hand eye coordination. These easy activities can be simple tasks like putting some stuff in a particular area/section but that might just help the child in the development of a very important skill.

This week we have got such activity ideas for children between the age of 18-36 months.

Colour Sorting Bead Game

This game is focussed on developing 2 skills. Firstly, the child will learn the colours when he/she sorts them. Secondly, the child will develop hand eye coordination while putting in the beads in the sticks.

Shape the Sticks

Another interesting but pretty simple activity for the development of Fine Motor Skills in children is 'Shape the Sticks'. The Parents can take colored print outs of shapes made with lines of different colors and along with that provide ice cream sticks painted with different colors to their children. All the kids need to do is arrange the sticks according to the colored shape flash card provided to them.

Skills that are developed as a result of this activity are:

• Color Identification: When trying to find sticks to match the flashcard

• Shape Understanding: When trying to put sticks in the shape shown in flashcard

• Pinch Grip: When trying to pick the sticks and put them down

• Hand-eye Coordination: When trying to put sticks in the shape shown in the flashcard while looking at the flashcard simultaneously

Double-sided Wipe and Clean Flash Cards

Fine Motor Skills' development helps in writing practice too. Kids are first made to practice making straight lines and zig-zag lines etc and not directly letters. This helps them with gripping the pencil and moving it in a certain direction as needed. These wipe and clean flash cards are perfect for practicing this. One side they can be used for coloring and the other side for drawing the different patterns. See the video to understand the process of making and using these flash cards.

DIY Cap Stamps

Another activity for developing pinch grip and learning color and shape identification is the use of Cap Stamps. These cap stamps that we have used for this activity are also DIY so it adds on another activity for the child to perform and learn meanwhile making it easy for the parents to create an activity.

I Spy (A to Z Game)

This game has been used as an introduction to Alphabets for the kids. Along with development of Fine Motor Skills and Hand Eye Coordination this game also focuses on playing with colours and alphabets. In this way, it covers a lot of areas of kid's development are focused with just one game. Of course, our main focus also being ease of making for the parents has also been kept in mind.