Other Activities for your Students

Fine Motor Skills Activities

Hand skills are crucial to successful handwriting. Small movements of the hand are are fine motor skills. If a child needs extra activities to strengthen fine motor skills, try these activities:

• Cutting pictures out of newspapers or magazines
• Playing with small beads, Legos, Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs, and so forth
• Kneading and building with Play Dough or clay
• Finding hidden objects in the dough
• Playing pegboard games
• Using tweezers to pick up small household objects and place them in a container
• Playing with any toys that involve manipulation of small pieces
• Squirting water bottle outdoors on the sidewalk
• Having a cotton ball race across the table
• Finger painting with Jell-O or Cocoa on a paper plate
• Forming letters with small marshmallows and toothpicks
• Stringing popcorn, buttons, or beads to make necklaces
• Creating a design on paper with a hole punch
• Playing tug-of-war with a coffee stirrer, holding it only with the thumb and index finger

Sensory Integration Activities

Incorporate handwriting with multisensory tactile experiences (writing on the mirror with foam soap, drawing in the sand, and the like).

Perceptual Activities

Do a word search where children have to write the words as they find them. Play a visual memory game on the board where you give children a few letters, let them look, and then erase them. They have to remember the letters on the board and write them neatly.