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One of the most important skills to develop during early childhood is their fine motor muscles. Learn about how I reinforce this essential in my classroom.

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I have spoken at length about fine motor skills on my Podcast, on my Instagram page, and I even did a whole series of activity ideas using cookie cutters.

My love of this topic has brought me to really think about the importance of reinforcing these skills, and what that looks like in kindergarten. For sensory bins, take a look at my 7 Non-Food Sensory Bin Filler Ideas that has even more fine motor ideas.

I have gone over some resources that I use in my classroom in my Fine Motor Activities blog post, but I thought I needed to take an even deeper dive into the what and how of it.

The Importance of Fine Motor Skills

Why do I talk about fine motor skills so much? I know they are the foundation for so many other skills that children need!

If they have not worked on strengthening those little muscles, their pencil grip and scissor skills will suffer. There is no point in teaching proper letter formations if your students have not been working on their fine motor muscle control.

Children will also need to improve their dexterity in order to gain new self-help skills. Tying shoelaces, zipping up coats, turning the pages of the book all need those muscles to be strong and able to perform those tasks.

Materials

This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the materials I have used, but they are a great starting point to getting ideas for your classroom.

I have used affiliate links to show you examples of these items.

• tweezers
• threading beads
• cutting
• play dough
• clothespins
• plastic links
• hole punch
• snap cubes/blocks
• push pins
• geoboards
• stickers
• bingo dabbers
• eye droppers

Fine Motor Skills in Kindergarten

Incorporating fine motor skills into your classroom is an important step. What items can you add to your environment that will have students practicing?

Adding tweezers to the sensory bin, using geoboards to practice making letters, threading beads to make patterns. There are so many ways that you can embed fine motor into all areas of your classroom.

I have also included a fine motor table in my classroom. Every week, I would set up a new activity for students to do that specifically worked on fine motor skills.

You can see examples of this table in action here:

• Rain Cloud Fine Motor
• Rainbow Beading
• Rainbow Necklaces
• Snowflake Fine Motor
• Linking Station
• Hanging Clothes
• Feed the Crocodile
• Worm Hunt

My students also knew what they were working on at that table and why. They could tell anyone that they were strengthening their fine motor skills (the little muscles in their fingers), and they needed to do that to be good writers or drawers.

It’s important to give those learning goals to your students, with any skill you are working on so that they know the importance of it too.

I hope that this blog post provided some insight into how I have drastically improved fine motor skills for my students. If you have any questions, or want to share what you do- leave a comment!

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