About Fine and Gross Motor Skills

Activity ideas encouraging fine & gross motor skills

Hello! It seems a very long time since I wrote the last Blog. I have been away greeting a new grandchild into our family!

Meanwhile Winnie has been busy sending out orders and keeping up with emails. I, on the other hand, had little opportunity to read emails but I did see one from the VDET outlining future directions for the School Readiness Funding Menu. (Of course, I saw that one!)

One paragraph was of particular interest …

‘In 2023 the ‘Wellbeing’ priority area will be expanded to incorporate fine and gross motor skill development. This change has been made in acknowledgement that these skills are necessary pre-cursors for effective social and emotional development. For 2023, fine and gross motor skill development support will be provided through Allied Health providers.’

So here are some ideas about using two of the Ginnie & Pinney stories to explore fine and gross motor skills.  I will follow up with more ideas in another blog post.

In ‘Flight of the Kite’ the characters are making kites of all different patterns and colours. I am not sure, but I think making kites that can actually fly might be a bit of a big ask for this age group so I have some other suggestions. These will address fine motor skills.

• Look at the kite shapes in the book
• Ask the children if they can name circles, squares or other shapes.
• Give the children paper templates of the shapes and ask them to cut out around outlines
• Provide a very large piece of paper and have the children work together to stick the cut shapes down to make ‘kites’
• Now give them rectangular pieces of coloured paper and show them how to ‘concertina’ the paper. Now make a ‘bow’ by tying a piece of twine or string in the middle of the rectangle and draw it together. Your paper rectangle should now look like a bow tie!  
• Help the children to do the same.
• Use pieces of cut string to make the tail of the ‘kite’
• ‘Stick’ the ‘bows’ to the string
• The coloured shapes can now be decorated with crayons and the background can be painted as if the kites are flying across the sky.

The story, ‘When I Grow Up’ can be a great way for children to use both gross and fine motor skills.

• If you don’t have a dress up basket at your centre, ask the children to bring some ‘dress up’ clothes.
• Clothes with buttons, press studs or hooks and eyes will encourage their fine motor skills whilst putting on the dress ups will help them with gross motor skills.
• If you can sew some buttons of different shapes and sizes to pieces of cloth with slits on another piece of cloth your students can practice buttoning these together.
• Another idea is to making ‘sailors’ hats for the children to decorate and wear
• Play out the story in the book, with your help or create a ‘dress up’ party
• Making coloured paper chains by gluing strips of paper together can be used to decorate the classroom for the dress up party.

It would be really great if you could share your ideas with us on our social media or here, on the blog.

Stand by for some more ideas to encourage fine and gross motor skills.

Hope you have lots of fun with all of this.

Until next time!

Have a great week!