Fine Motor Skills

When babies are born, their brain is not developed enough to control this type of movement. This happens with time, as your baby grows.

Fine Motor skills are simply actions that involve your child using his smaller muscles, such as the ones found in his hands and fingers, to manipulate objects of different shapes and sizes.

By holding a small object between his finger and thumb, your child is using his fine motor skills. But it is not only limited to fingers. By using his mouth to taste different foods, your child is also using his fine motor skills.

When babies are born, their brain is not developed enough to control this type of movement. This happens with time, as your baby grows.

Typically, development starts in the head, and then gradually advances down to the rest of the muscles in the body.

This means that babies gain control of their face, mouth, lips, and tongue first, followed by the rest of their body muscles in time.

Fine Motor skills usually start to develop as your child’s whole body gains stability and mobility as well as with his cognitive and social development. They are a critical part of his development as he needs to learn to use his hands competently to be able to manipulate objects and to acquire self-help skills such as feeding and dressing.

If you notice your child trying to accomplish something on his own, encourage him with positive words of reinforcement and show him different ways of achieving his objective without completing the task for him.

At this age, your pre-schooler can engage in longer periods of active play. He now has more control over objects of different shapes and sizes and you will find he is more able to throw, catch, kick and bounce balls. His improved finger control allows him to hold writing tools with a more advanced, tripod grip (using three fingers). His progress in hand-eye coordination will enable him to complete more complex puzzles, play with toys that have small parts and dress/undress without your help. Activities that can help in your 4 year old’s Fine Motor skill development:

• Supervise as he pours water into his cup on his own
• Help him use baby safe scissors to cut around pictures from a magazine and paste them on a separate sheet
• Throw a small ball to him from a short distance and have him throw it back to you
• Create an activity out of pasting uncooked pasta onto sheets of paper to create familiar objects (for example: draw a house and paste the pasta inside the lines)
• Place sand in a container and have him draw lines and shapes in it using his finger