Skill: Finger Strength

Having enough power in the small hand muscles to do things like open a lunchbox, squeeze a glue bottle, or hold a pencil without getting tired.

Fall Leaves

Use a brown construction paper and draw a rectangle to be used as the tree’s trunk.

Let the child cut out the rectangle to promote visual motor skills.

Ask the child to glue the brown rectangle on piece of white construction paper.

Using the crayons or markers, have the child draw a few branches coming out of the trunk of the tree on the white construction paper.

Instruct the child to mark a few dots using the glue on each branch.

Place some leaves on the table on the child’s non dominant side.

Provide the child with tweezers or tongs and have him catch one leaf at a time and move across the midline to place it on top of a glue dots.

Repeat until all leaves are glued on the tree.

Feed the Ball

Cut a 3-inch horizontal line across the tennis ball (so when you squeeze the ball, it looks like the tennis ball is opening a mouth). Put the coins (beans or beads can be used as well with older kids) on the table, in front of the child.

First, show the child how to squeeze the ball so it opens its mouth using only one hand (preferably the dominant hand). Then have the child pick up the coins, one coin at a time, using a pincer grasp and “feed” the ball by squeezing it with the other hand and opening its mouth.

To work on finger translation, ask the child to pick up 2-3 coins at one time and “feed” the tennis ball one coin at a time.

Paper Star Fish

Download and print the Star Fish template.

Ask the child to cut out the star fish image. For children that have difficulties with cutting skills, it is recommended to cut on heavier paper (i.e card-stock or construction paper), and provide with thicker lines/boundaries.

Using the tissue paper, instruct the child to tear pieces of the paper and crumble them into small balls. Encourage the child to move his thumb, pointer, and middle fingers in a circular motion.

Have the child glue the tissue paper balls on the star fish.

If you are using construction paper only, you can cut strips of paper, and let the child tear small pieces to glue on the star fish. If using beans, buttons, or sequins, you can promote pincer grasp by using tongs/tweezers to pick up the items to glue. Stickers can also be used.

Squirt Till it Drops

Fill up the bucket/container with water to the midline and drop in the Ping-Pong ball (you can use more than one ball, or different size plastic balls). Fill up the squirt bottle with water and let the child squeeze and squirt the water out into the bucket/container until the Ping-Pong ball falls out of the bucket/container.

This activity can be done with more than one child. The first child that has his/her Ping-Pong ball fall out of the bucket/container wins!

To work on developing visual motor skills, fill up the squirt bottle with shaving cream or foam and let the child squeeze the bottle to draw shapes and letters on a concrete surface or an easel.

A Slippery Fish

Fill a container with water up to the midline and put inside small floating objects (i.e. ice molds, fish toys, etc.).

Have the child use the tongs to catch the objects in the water and take them out of the water.

You may want to have some paper towels ready for this activity as it might get a bit wet.