What are fine motor skills and why are they important?
Fine motor skills refer to the coordination between your child's small muscles, like those in their hands, wrists, and fingers in coordination with their eyes. Fine motor skills involve the small muscles of the body that enable such functions as writing, grasping small objects, and fastening clothing.
According to healthline, children start to develop their fine motor skills as early as 1 or 2 months old and continue to develop these skills throughout their childhood.
What does "Fine Motor Skills" mean and why are they needed?
Fine Motor Skills is the ability to control the fingers, hands, and thumb to perform movements like grasping toys, buttoning or zipping clothes, feeding, writing, drawing, and so much more.
Some of the fine motor skills that your kids develop during childhood:
- Wrist stability - helps children move their hands and fingers with strength and stability, so they can hold, lift, carry, and push weights.
- Strengthening the palmar arches - the palmar arch supplies the deep muscles of the hands, fingers, and thumb. They are the ones responsible for helping your kids hold a pen or pencil for writing and/or drawing.
- Side of the hand skills - helps your child grasp things, such as toys, food or a water bottle etc.
- Bilateral hand skills - an important stage in the development of fine motor skills is the development of bilateral hand use. This is the use of two hands together to grasp and manipulate objects.
- Scissor skills - a skill that helps your kids perform complex tasks, such as bilateral coordination, hand-eye coordination, wrist stability, and focus.
Here are some of the toys that we recommend to help with developing fine motor skills;
1. Puzzles
Putting puzzle pieces together helps enhance fine motor skills. Play with your kids, do puzzles together, and enjoy while learning at the same time. Check out our collection of games and puzzles here.
2. Play-Doh
Play-doh is a great way for kids to experiment and enhance their fine motor skills at the same time. Check out our collection of games and puzzles here.
3. Lego
If you haven't played with legos before, you should definitely check it out as it's super fun and helps your kids become more creative while developing their fine motor skills, too. Check out LEGO DUPLO for the younger kids.
4. Drawing and colouring
By encouraging your child to draw, colour and paint, you're helping them develop not only their fine motor skills but also their creative brain, too.
5. Plush and soft toys
Children love plush and soft toys. (So do many adults, for that matter!😉🙋♀️). Softies, plushies, soft toys - call them what you will! They're often a child's first toy, and sometimes their first best friend other than their caregiver (parent or grandparent). Kids learn many skills with their softies; they talk with them, hold and hug them, walk with them, and so much more! Through that, they're able to develop and enhance all sorts of skills, including fine motor skills. Check out our plush and soft toys here.
There are loads of different toys that help kids develop their fine motor skills, and the video below shows you different activities that use craft objects - all available in our stores, except for the pegs! 😉 (sure you'll have plenty of those at home already!)
If your kids are LEGO fans, make sure you enter our FREE LEGO Pirates of Barracuda Bay giveaway valued at $299.99!!! Click through to ready this post.
(Sources: Healthline, Very Well Family)