The ABCs Of Fine Motor Activities In Daycare
What will your child do during their day in daycare? From early literacy to the creative arts, your preschooler will experience activities galore. Along with academic or cognitive-based activities, your child will also engage in explorations that encourage fine motor skill-building. If you're not sure how a childcare services center can help your preschooler to develop hand and finger movement skills, take a look at the ABCs of these daycare activities.
Art Activities
The visual arts provide an easy way for young children to practice fine motor skills. These growing abilities include hand/finger strength, eye-hand coordination, and dexterity. Not only will your child use these skills right now to engage in art and other classroom-based activities, but they'll also need fine motor abilities to write, use a computer keyboard, and care for themselves (feed and dress themselves).
Art activities vary by center and by pre-kindergarten classroom. These may include painting, drawing, sculpting, or collaging. Some activities combine two or more of these options into one lesson or process-based exploration. A combination of painting and drawing or a similar activity encourages the young child to use their hands/fingers in different ways.
Block Building Activities
Art isn't the only way your child can build fine motor skills in pre-school. Block-building activities are common in most early childhood classrooms. While building with blocks may just seem like a simple way for children to play, these activities can encourage preschoolers to build a variety of skills—including fine motor abilities.
As the child moves and manipulates the blocks to stack, line up, or create larger structures with the objects, they'll develop eye-hand coordination, dexterity, and other fine motor skills. While classic cube-shaped wood blocks are popular choices for this type of activity, some early childhood educators give students an array of different options to choose from. These could include smaller/larger blocks, different textures (such as rubber or plastic blocks), or different shapes.
Cutting and Tearing Activities
These activities can fall under the early childhood art umbrella. Even though young children may cut or tear paper to collage in the classroom's art area, they may also try these types of fine motor activities without a craft-focused purpose.
The teacher may encourage the children to explore the motion of cutting with paper, safety scissors, and no specific project or result-oriented directions. This type of process-based exploration or experimentation activity is also a popular way for children to build fine motor skills without scissors. Instead of manipulating scissors as a cutting tool, the child can use their own fingers to tear paper into smaller pieces or shapes.
Contact daycares in your area, such as Learning Tree Schools, to learn more.