Developing motor skills is a crucial part of a childhood. When you’re young, you don’t have the same control over your hands as you do now, which makes tasks such as holding a pencil for long periods of time pretty tough. To aid in your little one’s development, we recommend that you do fun crafts with them, and to help you get started we’ve put together some ideas of what you can do. Just make sure you know how to remove paint from clothes!
Get Baking
Baking is a fun activity for both you and your child. In terms of motor skills, baking will help your child by encouraging them to hold items and use them at the same time, for example stirring with a spoon.
Make it even more fun by holding a decorating competition. Make a bunch of cupcakes, cookies or whatever you love and let them go to town with icing, sprinkles and all that great stuff! Decorating such small items requires control of hand movements, which is a must when it comes to improving motor skills.
String Games
String games, for example cat’s cradle, are great for improving motor skills and easy to set up. All you need is some string, a game in mind and some patience! It’ll help improve the strength of your child’s fingers and work on their hand-eye co-ordination.
Create a Board Game
With all this talk of games, why not create your own? Get a large piece of card, come up with the rules together and then starting making your game. This activity can include a wealth of motor-skill-improving tasks. For example, cutting out shapes (supervised, of course) improves accuracy, painting the board and pieces helps with holding an object and the muscles in your little one’s hands and arms will get a great workout. Just be prepared for things to get messy and make sure you know how to remove paint from clothes!
Play-Dough Fun
There’s a reason why play-dough has remained a childhood favourite for so many years. Not only is it super fun for kids and an easy way to keep them entertained, it’s also fantastic for motor skills. By pulling, squeezing and molding their play-dough, your kids will be strengthening muscles in their hands and arms that are crucial for development.
Helping your child to develop their motor skills is a must, and by doing it through these fun activities you’ll both enjoy it. If your child’s motor skills are under-developed, we think it’s important you’re doing something every day to help them improve. Before you know it, they’ll be holding items with ease!