Writing practise, and helping children with their fine motor skills activity, is an important part of early learning play. It is an area that schools and nurseries focus on in development, and we wanted to be able to help out. We have therefore produced some rather cool pencil control workbooks to help kids with their pencil grip.
This is actually part of a set of four posts to improve fine motor skills in kids, so why not check out some of the other ways that you can help those in your class or your children?
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT
Q-Tip Painting // Sarah Chesworth
Pencil Control Workbook // KiddyCharts
Monster Eyes Match // Teach Me Mommy
Shark Fine Motor Activities // Fairy Poppins
There are some gorgeous fine motor skills activities included here as you can see…
Why is encouraging pencil grip important?
Encouraging pencil grip from an early age, is a great idea – and it helps to give kids crayons, and paper, as soon as they stop putting things in their mouth. Ideally, children should be helped to recognise the names for their thumb, pointer and middle finger at this time too. Naming helps with understanding of course. The song Tom Thumb is a great help here!
How to encourage good pencil grip
There are a number of things that you can do to help children with their pencil grip:
- Show them to way it is done,
- Give them plenty of practise (which is where this activity and workbook come in handy),
- Help your child put their thumb and pointer finger in the correct position,
- Try different pencils and grips so if your children do struggle a little they have a bit of variety to get it right,
- Use textured pens and pencils to help children initially “feel” the difference when they have the grip correct,
- Point out to them when they get it right, and give them a pat on the back, and
- Make practising fun – so don’t push, just guide with lots of colouring, and other ideas and activities, so it doesn’t become a chore for them.
Once a child has the beginnings of the grip – do try and encourage the tripod grasp. It is a lot heard to change a bad habit, than to help them learn a good one from the start.
These fine motor skills activities are simple ones to help them improve their motor skills, and can be done from a relatively early age, with some of the earlier stages of pencil grasp development. The tracing helps with focus, and grip, and can be repeated with your children at any stage of pencil grip learning; from fisted to tripod!
The activities include:
- Helping the dog get home,
- Helping the animals find their food,
- Putting hair on a clown,
- More animals to find homes for,
- Simple pattern line tracing, and
- Complete the bear activity
We know you like to see what you are getting, so here are the images of the activities for you to take a look at.
Fine motor skills activity: Will help the dog get home
This is incredibly cute – just help the doggie get home!
Get the animals to their food
Another simple idea but really effective for children is to help the animals find their food. We have three looking for their dinner here…well one of them is a bee, so it is trying to find a flower, but you know what we mean 😂
Give the clown some hair…
Clowns are a constant source of fun – and this one is helpful in that he needs a little bit of hair tracing too…! If you want other clown activities, then do check out articles on making funny faces, a red nose, and how to become the perfect clown.
More animals and more food!
We have another four animals here for the children to guide to their food; but this time across rather than down the page. Get the monkey to his bananas, and the bear to their honey!
Pretty tracing patterns
These are simple, but effective – just a few lines for the children to have a go out, before the final freebie we have this week for you…which we know you will love as….
It’s a bear – complete the other half
The final activity for improving fine motor skills is to complete the rest of the bear. We have done one half, and the children just need to complete the other one…
We have saved the best until last again…
To access the workbook, just click on the circular image below and download:
We do hope that you have enjoyed this activity, as well as some of the other activities within the post that are designed to help with fine motor skills. There is so much for the children to get stuck in to!
For other activities on KiddyCharts that help with fine motor skills and writing, do take a look here:
Fine motor skills and writing practise
Some further ideas for helping children with their fine motor skills, and writing too.
Making a cutting fine motor skills busy box #31DaysOfLearning
A lovely little busy box for the kids to practise cutting skills - an excellent activity to improve motor skills.
Five activities using kitchen tongs to promote fine motor skills
Get busy in the kitchen to help with the kids motor skills this time!
Printable number lacing cards for kids to sew
Lacing is a wonderful and fun activity for kids - and these number cards are excellent for encouraging it.
Get your Pen License certificate! Pen License and Handwriting Rockstars
If you need to encourage things in older kids - how about a pen license certificate for them to work towards?
Shape tracing for kids
We have simple lines within this activity for the kids, this is more about the shapes than the lines!
Number tracing for kids
Finally, we have some tracing activities based about numbers for you here.....
If there is anything else we can do for you, do give us a shout out on Twitter, or perhaps sign up to our newsletter and let us know what it is that you need at the moment.
We have loved seeing you on the site, and do come back again soon. And in the meantime, do check out the other fine motor activities from some of my follow kid bloggers too in the list above.
Thanks for coming,
Helen
Helen
Helen is a mum to two, social media consultant, and website editor; and this site is (we think) the only Social Enterprise parenting magazine!Since giving up being a business analyst when juggling travel, work and kids proved too complicated, she founded KiddyCharts so she could be with her kids, and use those grey cells at the same time.KiddyCharts has reach of over 1.1million across social and the site. The blog works with big family brands (including travel) to help promote their services, as well as offering free resources to parents of kids under 10.It gives 51%+ profits to Reverence for Life, who fund a number of important initiatives in Africa, including bringing running water and basic equipment to a school in Tanzania.Helen has worked as a digital marketing consultant (IDM qualified) with various organisations, including Channel Mum, Truprint, Talk to Mums, and Micro Scooters. She loves to be creative in the brand campaigns she works on.Get in touch TODAY!