Looking for motor skills development activities to do at home with toddlers and preschoolers? Here are fun ways to improve children’s fine motor skills (fine motor dexterity) and gross motor skills (large muscle group play) for little kids in preschool through kindergarten with at home skills.
50+ Best Motor Skills Development Activities For Kids
If you’re working with toddler, preschool, or kindergarten ages, you probably know the importance of motor skills development like fine motor skills and gross motor skills. Let’s start with practical gross children’s motor skills development. (We’ll cover more later, including fine motor coordination / small motor development.)
What gross motor activities can parents do with their child at home?
How to improve motor skills:
- Jumping on a trampoline
- Playing catch with a ball
- Hopping on one foot
- Skipping
- Balancing on a beam or log
- Climbing on a playground structure
- Riding a tricycle or bicycle with training wheels
- Playing a game of Simon says
- Participating in an obstacle course
- Dancing or following simple movement routines
- Playing tag or other chase games
- Crawling through tunnels or under furniture
- Rolling or kicking a large ball
- Playing on a swing or tire swing
- Walking on a balance beam or a line on the floor
- Doing animal walks (e.g., bear crawl, crab walk)
- Practicing jumping jacks or other aerobic exercises
- Playing Red Light, Green Light
How can I teach fine motor skills at home?
Fine motor activities for home:
- Playing with Playdough
- Putting together puzzles
- Cutting and pasting
- Sorting and transferring
- Finger painting
- Threading and beading
- Play and stacking building blocks (if you’re wondering is stacking blocks a fine motor skill, the answer is YES!)
- Tracing and drawing
- Zipping activities for preschool and toddlers
- Helping with cooking and stirring (one of my favorite fine motor activities at home for little ones!)
KEEP SCROLLING for the full list of learning motor skills activities and motor skills improvement — gross motor skill ideas and how to improve fine motor skills for 3 – 4 year olds or 5-6 year olds!
What Is Motor Skills Development?
It’s easy to get excited about specific study unit or some fun unschooling that you’re going to do with your young ones and forget about the importance of motor skills in child development. Gross and fine motor skills for preschoolers and kindergartners are an important part of the ages & stages milestones.
So, how do children’s motor skills develop?
What are the two types of motor development?
Motor skills development simply means using muscles to perform actions. There are two types of motor skills development that you need to be concerned with, especially for younger children like toddlers, preschoolers, and kindergartners: gross motor skills and fine motor skills.
What are examples of motor development?
Motor skills examples include those that use small muscle groups and large muscle groups.
Gross motor skills coordinate large muscle groups like arms and legs like running and catching a ball.
Building fine motor skills activities include movements in small muscles in the fingers and hand like buttoning clothes and painting.
HOMESCHOOL TIP: Review a Motor Skills Development Chart like this to get a generalized idea of motor skills milestones for improving fine motor skills and gross motor skills.
What’s the difference between fine motor and gross motor skills?
Gross Motor Skills Definition
Gross motor skills are those movements and coordination of larger muscles like arms and legs. When you think of motoric skills, think motor movement!
Examples of gross motor skills activities are running and swimming or anything that uses large muscle groups.
Fine Motor Skills Definition
Fine motor skills are the smaller muscle movements like using the fingers, hands, and wrists, as well as feet and toes.
These are also the skills that will also help your child with holding a pencil and writing, so developing fine motor skills are very important.
Fine motor skills activities and fine motor skills help include things like painting, sorting small items, writing, popping bubble wrap, brushing teeth, modeling and molding with clay, or even blowing bubbles with a bubble wand.
Fine Motor Skills vs Gross Motor Skills [VIDEO] (help with fine motor skills and gross motor skills)
Why Is Motor Skills Development Critical for Young Children?
Developing motor skills helps children also development their cognitive skills, helps kids control their bodies, and also helps them perform everyday life functions.
So, while it’s nice to focus on the cognitive development of your younger kids, you definitely want to incorporate motor skills into your daily learning.
How do you do it?
Gross motor skills activities are easy!
Take your kid to a park or playground and let them go crazy. They’ll easily use their gross motor skills running, jumping, climbing, balancing, and playing.
But, how to build fine motor skills?
You may have a little more trouble coming up with some ways to improve fine motor skills and helping your kids learn how to develop fine motor skills.
Just think of anything that a child does using mainly their fingers and hands and you’ll probably cover most of the fine motor skills activities. Working on fine motor skills is just as fun as working on gross motor muscle skills!
Before we move on to the motor skills development list of activities and strengthening fine motor skills and gross skills, I want to talk to you about an alarming trend we are seeing with younger kids today.
Alarming Decline of Fine Motor Skills in Young Children
Why are our children’s fine motor skills declining?
Today, teachers, educators, and parents are seeing a decline in fine motor skills (especially in younger children).
I bet you can guess the cause, right?
Screen time has really affected preschool fine motor development and fine motor skills in early childhood, so you want to be sure to add motor muscle play into your homeschooling or at-home play!
Effects of Touch Screen Tablet Use on Fine Motor Development
Some studies are blaming the early use of electronic devices as one of the causes of loss of fine motor skills in hands and declining dexterity.
(You know, like when we let our young ones play with the phone or on the iPad and other touch screen devices.)
Children today are holding things less and spending less time with play types that strengthen fine motor skills like cutting with scissors, coloring with crayons, painting with a small paintbrush, and doing other things that use a grip.
On the trend to build fine motor skills, one early education facility stated:
The increase in popularity of handheld electronics for young children has had a significant impact on fine motor development in young children—often with long term effects.
Parents are providing fewer opportunities for children to hone in on their fine motor skills with fewer hands-on tasks.
As a result, teachers of young children are noting that they have less endurance and weak pencil grip.
With this weakened hand and lower arm muscle strength, students struggle with both basic academic and life skills.
Skills that require fine motor skills, such as cutting, writing and dressing are dependent on hand strength.
So, why are fine motor skills important?
The article went on to state, “Weak fine motor function affects the quality and speed in which a child can perform tasks that require the development of those smaller hand muscles such as writing, cutting, dressing, eating and other everyday tasks.”
YIKES.
We have a full list of fun ways on how to strengthen fine motor skills below!
Learn more about improving motor skills: If you want to do more research, you can read an official white paper study, Effect of Touch Screen Tablet Use on Fine Motor Development of Young Children, from the National Institutes of Health.
SO, how do you improve motor skills (fine and gross motor skills)? Have fun incorporating some of the activities on the lists below!
50+ BEST LIST OF MOTOR SKILLS ACTIVITIES
Here’s a list of fun, fine motor skills activities and also gross motor skills examples to get you started — preschool muscle activities and motor skills kindergarten ideas!
We’ll start with the fine motor skills list.
BE SURE TO SCROLL DOWN FOR THE GROSS MOTOR SKILLS ACTIVITIES AFTER THIS SECTION.
23+ Fun Fine Motor Skills Activities for Motor Skills Development
What activities develop fine motor skills?
Anything that works the fine muscles (like in hands) are great for physical fine motor skills. These are fun kindergarten and preschool fine motor skills to get you started and creative ways to improve fine motor skills.
Fine Motor Skills Ideas:
• Use sticks and stones to form letters and shapes outdoors
• Put together big piece puzzles
• Work on buttoning and tying
• Make fun paper shapes with safe craft scissors
• Paint with a small, fine-tipped paint brush
• Use sidewalk chalk
• Play with Playdough and cookie cutters
• Thread beads onto pipe cleaners
• Sort different items into specific jars with tongs
• Make a pasta necklace (I love this for a kindergarten fine motor skills activity)
• Finger paint
• Play with kinetic sand
• Put cotton balls into a bowl with a spoon
• Use use sticker books like this
• Stack blocks
• Pin clothespins onto a yarn line (or laundry onto a clothesline!)
• Draw with colored pencils
• Hole punch with fun shapes like this
• Make a peanut butter (or other spread) sandwich
• String Cheerios cereal onto yarn for a necklace
• Hammer golf tees into the ground with crab mallets
• Blow and pop bubbles (or pop bubblewrap)
• Swing on the playground monkey bars
• Play string games (old school fine motor skills development!)
Any play activity working with hands is great for early childhood fine motor skills practice!
Now that we’ve talked about the importance of fine motor skills and why it’s important for child development, now let’s cover gross motor skills activities.
27+ FUN Large Muscle Gross Motor Skills Activities for Motor Skills Development
• Play hopscotch (I love this for motor learning skills to practice letters and numbers, too!)
• Roll down a hill
• Go skating
• Ride bicycles
• Host a fun dance party
• Create a ninja obstacle course
• Jump on the trampoline
• Set up home bowling
• Dance and dust (with fun mop shoes!)
• Paint a fence (with water or paint) using a large paintbrush
• Host a kickball party
• Go on a nature hike scavenger hunt
• Hula hoop
• Fly a kite
• Go to a climbing wall
• Throw frisbees
• Play flashlight tag
• Walk the dog
• Pretend to be an animal in the jungle
• Play in a ball pit
• Have a sack race
• Stomp in a shallow stream
• Go swimming
• Play water balloon toss
• Balance on a balancing beam
• Play move and freeze: GROSS MOTOR SKILLS DEVELOPMENT: HOW TO PLAY MOVE AND FREEZE [VIDEO]
These are just a few examples and gross motor (large muscle) activities are only limited by your imagination!
Get out and get creative with your kids!
The fine motor skills activities are a bit more difficult, but just do anything where the kids are using hands, fingers, wrists, and yes, even toes!
MORE PRESCHOOL IDEAS: Fun Must-Have Homeschooling Preschool Materials
Don’t forget to add in important motor skills development to homeschooling and activities at home!
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