Chopsticks For Fine-Motor Muscle Control

Fashioned chopsticks with a rubber band around one end to hold them together make a great tool to practise fine motor control in the fingers. This activity involves picking, squeezing, holding, positioning and releasing. A fun activity and easy to make and play at home.  

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Shape Matching Boards

This is an easy idea. Simply take two pieces of equal sized cardboard and paint them different colours. Score out shapes from one of the pieces and then glue the big pieces together. Wait for it to dry and you are ready to go. You can also make number boards or phonic boards too.

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Matching Numbers: Parking

This is a fun activity that helps children to match up numbers. Attach numbers to the vehicles and ask the children to park them in the right place. This is easily adaptable with phonics too.

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Light Board Colour Tracing

As well as being an art and sensory exercise this is great for maths and phonics. Here the children traced letters, the sound for today being ‘s’ but it is also good for number recognition too.

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The Addition Machine

After seeing this game on Pinterest we were inspired to try it ourselves. In this exercise the children are able to visually see what is happening when we add numbers. This really helped the children to grasp the concept of adding. They took turns to count cubes into the funnels. Once they had collected all…

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Trace the shapes

This activity is great for fine motor practice and is a prelude to building handwriting skills. The activity is also great for teaching children about shape names too. You can also swap the shapes for letters and have the children trace the sound of the day. It is important to make the laminates large and colourful.

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Fine Motor Activities – Paper Clips

Activity: Very simple and cheap way to challenge your child to clip as many paper clips onto a cardboard tube as they can in a certain time. Coordination is also  practiced; to grip and steady the tube as they attach the clips at the same time. Differentiation: Set targets for your child. Reduce the amount…

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Fine Motor Activities – Pegs on a Line

Activity: Children use their finger tips to pinch open the pegs and carefully clip them to a washing line. Just as with threading, hand and eye coordination is needed. Differentiation: Pegs vary a lot. From a child friendly large plastic type, to smaller wooden ones with stronger springs. Using a different pegs with more resistance…

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Fine Motor Activities – Lolly Stick Sorting

Activity: Children are asked to pick and sort coloured straws or lolly sticks into the correct container or pot. In this way the activity also covers an important maths objective and also allows for language development. Differentiation:Straws would be used initially as they are easier to pinch between the fingers to pick up. As a child’s…

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DIY magic boards

For this activity we made our own magic boards. The children could trace letters, make shapes or even just use them for sensory play. Simply add paint to a Ziploc bag and off you go. British Early Years Centre is a British International Kindergarten School in Bangkok  

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