Skill: Fine Motor Control

Using the small muscles in the hands and wrists to make precise movements. This is the foundation for almost all school tasks, like drawing, writing, and using tools.

Textured Paper Painting

A young child finger paints on a textured rectangle of crinkled brown paper bag to develop sensory processing skills.

Draw (or depending on the child’s developmental skills, have the child trace or independently draw) a large rectangle on the paper bag (use the blank side if the paper bag has a design or picture on it) and ask the child to cut it out.

Fill the squirt bottle with water and have the child spray water all over the cut out rectangle. Encourage the child to utilize his thumb, index finger, and middle finger to press on the handle of the squirt bottle. Once the paper is moist, ask the child to use both hands and squeeze the paper into a little ball (have him squeeze as much as possible and drain out as much liquid as possible).

Then, ask the child to open up the paper and use both hands to flatten the paper back to a rectangle shape.

Allow the paper to dry up before you start drawing or painting on it. For a rough texture, let the paper dry on a flat surface in the sun. For a smoother texture, you can place the paper between to flat heavy objects.

Once the paper is dry, have the child use markers to draw the outline of the desired picture and use the paint to paint it. To work on pre-writing skills, you can outline lines and/or letters and have the child paint them.

To promote sensory processing and tactile perception, you can have the child use the paper with a rough texture and paint with finger paint.

Snack Time

A four-year-old child crumbles vanilla wafers into a bowl of banana pudding during a sensory kitchen activity at home.

This activity requires adult supervision and assistance. You can use any fruit the child likes, but for this example, we are going to use a banana.

Pour 4 ounces of milk into the mixing bowl and add one envelope of pudding (any flavor). Depending on the child’s age and abilities, this step may require an adult maximal assistance.

Using the spoon, have the child stir the milk and pudding mix vigorously until it thickens. Allow the child to peel the banana and if can do so independently. Assist the child in slicing the banana.

In a bowl, show the child how to layer the ingredients, placing the pudding first, then the banana slices, and then the wafers. Have the child follow this step as many times as you wish. For the last layer of wafers, have the child crumble the wafers on the top.

Colorful Bookmark

Let the child trace or draw a 3″ x 10″ rectangle (if you want to work on cutting curves, you may draw wiggly lines instead of straight ones). Have the child cut the rectangle out.

Using a single hole hole-puncher, assist the child in punching a hole in the top part of the rectangle. Then, have the child thread a piece of yarn through the hole.

Using the markers and stickers, let the child decorate the bookmark and make it colorful.

Additional ideas for decorating the bookmark:
1. Have the child crumble small pieces of tissue paper
2. Cut/trace a 2.5″ x 9″ rectangle with white printer paper, and glue onto the center within the 3″ x 10″ construction paper.
3. Have the child cut out pictures that he likes from newspaper and magazines
4. Laminate the bookmarks to preserve them!

Dot Dot Paint

Draw a picture on the construction paper. The picture could be anything that the child likes.

Provide the child with different colors of Tempera Paint.

Use the q-tips to paint your picture by dipping the tips into the paint and making little dots on your picture.

Winter Snowflakes

Have the child fold the paper in half vertically (independently or with assistance). Ask the child to draw any half-shape to be the base of the snowflake(i.e. half circle, half diamond, etc.). Instruct the child to draw more geometrical shapes along the edges of the paper, which can be cut out. Once the child is done drawing, let the child cut out all the shapes.

Let the child unfold the snowflake and decorate using crayons, markers, glitter, dot paint, stickers, etc.

To grade this activity you can:

1. Have lower/younger kids just cut out the big shape and then color in shapes that you draw for them (or you can draw and they can trace) if cutting the small shapes is too difficult

2. To make this activity easier you can also do half sheets of paper to make smaller snowflakes, less to color/cut/fold.

3. Have older/higher kids try to cut out shapes without drawing them first if they can. They can also fold the snowflake in half a second time (so it is in quarters) and do more cutouts on the snowflake.