Skill: Bilateral Hand Use

The ability to use both hands together as a team. We use this for almost everything, like holding the paper with one hand while cutting with the other, or buttoning a shirt.

Rainbow of Skills

A four-year-old child practices fine motor skills by tearing colored construction paper to create a paper plate rainbow craft at a kitchen table.

For this activity, you will need to use a red, yellow, orange, green, blue, and purple construction paper.

Draw a line in the middle of the paper plate and have the child cut along the line you drew. Using the pen, draw 5 curves, spaced 1-inch from each other.

Draw a vertical line on each of the construction papers, making a 1-inch strip. Ask the child to cut along the lines you drew. Before the child tears the strips, ask him to arrange the strips in the correct order of the colors of the rainbow.

Have the child tear each strip into pieces. Encourage him to use both hands and tear the pieces from top to bottom. If you want to work more on scissors skills or visual-motor skills, you can draw lines on the strips (straight, crocked or curved) and have the child cut along the lines you drew.

Finally, have the child glue the small pieces onto the paper plate, using the curved lines you drew to place the colors in the correct order.

Fruit Building

Fruit Building

Cut the fruit to bite size pieces and put them on a plate or in a container.

Provide the child with toothpicks (you can use different color and size toothpicks, wooden toothpicks, or plastic toothpicks).

Let the child poke the toothpicks into the fruit pieces and promote him/her to create a structure using his/her imagination and creativity.

When the structure is complete, encourage the child to “take it apart” by eating the fruit.

Lacing Pictures

A four-year-old child practices fine motor skills by lacing a colorful string through holes punched in an index card at a kitchen table.

Use the hole puncher and the index cards to punch holes in different directions or create different shapes.

Give the child a lace and show him/her the proper sequence to lace these holes.

Have the child lace the picture without skipping any hole.

Fine Motor Marble Maze

Marble Maze playing

In this activity, we create a marble maze to promote fine motor skills.

Start by gluing the straws on the cardboard. You will need to glue each straw on the opposite side as follows:

  • Glue the 1st straw aligned to the left edge of the cardboard
  • Glue next straw aligned to the right side of the cardboard
  • Keep gluing straws all the way to the bottom of the cardboard
  • Make sure to create a space for the marble to go through between the straws
  • The end result should look like this:
    Marble Maze straws

Let the glue dry.

We used a gallon size zip lock bag but you can use a smaller zip lock bag to create a smaller maze.

At the bottom edge of the zip lock bag, cut a small slit. Make sure you cut it on the side the marble will come out from.

Once the glue is dry and the straws are secured, insert the cardboard into the ziplock bag.

Close the ziplock bag almost all the way, leaving a small opening for the marble to fit in.

Put the marble through the opening and start moving it with your finger through the maze until it comes out at the bottom.

You can alternate the fingers you use to move the marble or you can use both hands to hold the cardboard and move it from side to side, letting the marble slide out.

Paper Roll Caterpillar

Caterpillar shape glued

Using the pencil and the ruler, mark the toilet roll every 2 inches and draw around the tube. These will be cutting lines we will use to create the paper roll caterpillar body.

Take the scissors and cut around the marks you have made so that you are left with several short tubes.

Paint the tubes both on the inside and outside, it is more effective if you paint the outside a different color to the inside.

Glue the tubes to each other, end to end, putting one tube aside to use for the head later.

Glue the head tube on the top of the last tube in the chain.

Using the glue, stick the two wiggle eyes on the head.

Draw a mouth just below the wiggle eyes.

Using the felt or the pipe cleaners, cut two short pieces and stick onto the top of the head to make antenna.

Cut two more pieces for each body section the caterpillar has and stick these onto the bottom to create legs.