Fine Motor Activities for Kindergarten Teachers

Today, I’m excited to share ideas and insights about fine motor kindergarten activities and their importance in early childhood education. Over the last several years, one of the hot topics in early childhood education has been the increasing number of children entering school without age-appropriate fine motor skills.  

While we hope that our students are having adequate fine motor experiences at home through play and daily tasks, many of them will still enter kindergarten with a fine motor delay.  A great deal of fine motor strength comes from normal and routine daily tasks, such as buttoning, coloring, and playing with toys.  It also might be necessary for you to add some activities with the explicit purpose of fine motor work.  Fortunately, I have lots of ideas for integrating fine motor work into your daily classroom routine and I’m sharing them with you today!

Why Are Fine Motor Skills Important?

Fine motor skills refer to the ability to control small muscle movements in the hands and fingers. These skills are necessary for academic success, as they impact handwriting, scissor use, and even manipulating small objects like beads or buttons. Research shows that strong fine motor skills in early childhood are linked to higher academic achievement later on. For example studies such as this one have linked fine motor skills with academic achievement and have found that students with better fine motor skills in kindergarten had higher rates of academic growth through middle school. By incorporating purposeful fine motor activities into your kindergarten classroom, you can help your students’ future academic success.

Integrating Fine Motor Practice into Your Kindergarten Classroom

Integrating more fine motor work depends heavily on your school day length and schedule, so what works for you might not work for another teacher.  If you have time for morning tubs or fine motor centers or stations, great! If not, you can find ways to add fine motor tools to existing centers or activities.

• Morning work time (with morning tubs or morning bins)
• Learning centers
• Fine motor stations or centers
• Take-home bags
• Fast-finisher tasks (although this may not provide all students with equal fine motor time)

1. Morning Work Time – Morning Tubs or Morning Bins

If you are already using morning tubs, you most likely already have some fine motor activities!  The greatest thing about morning tubs is that they’re hands-on instead of worksheets.  Morning tubs can be academic activities, non-academic/just-for-fun activities, or a combination. Here are some tools and activities that are great starters for fine motor integration:

• Play Dough: Using play dough is an excellent way to build hand strength. Provide opportunities for students to  roll, pinch, and cut play dough into different shapes.
• Stickers: Peeling and placing stickers is a simple yet effective way to improve finger strength and coordination. This could be as simple as having seasonal stickers available, or a page designed for sticker placement.

• Threading and Lacing: Threading beads onto pipe cleaners, shoelaces, or lacing cards is a fantastic way to improve hand-eye coordination and finger dexterity. 
• Cutting and Tearing Paper: Provide scissors and encourage students to cut scrap paper or cutting strips. You can also have them tear paper to strengthen their hand muscles.
• Tweezers and Pom-Poms: Give students tweezers or tongs and have them pick up small objects like pom-poms, mini erasers, or beads and sort them into cups. This activity is excellent for strengthening their tripod grip, which is needed for holding a pencil.

• Hole Punching: Using a hole punch can be tricky but fun! I highly recommend using this reduced-effort hole punch. It provides practice using a hole punch without the extra frustration!
• Clothespins: Have students use colored clothespins to clip paint samples! You can also provide clip cards that are focused on an educational skill.

My morning tub activity packs have dozens of activities that are specifically geared at fine motor strengthening, while others are more academic in nature. You can use all 20 activities in the packs or use some in combination with your own activities or materials. For example, here’s a look at some of the activities in my Back-to-School morning tubs pack that are great for integrating fine motor practice:

2. Fine Motor Work at Learning Centers

Adding fine motor experiences to your learning centers can be fun, easy, and effective. Sometimes all it takes is changing up an activity to incorporate a fine motor tool or task. Here are a few ideas:

3. Fine Motor Centers or Stations

If you are looking for a more established way to increase fine motor work, you might try fine motor stations or centers. For example, devote 30-60 minutes on Friday afternoons to “Fine Motor Friday” and have students rotate around fine motor stations. This can take some prep work and planning but it is also rewarding and fun. Consider doing thematic and seasonal activities. Here are some examples of activities from my fine motor packs.

4. Fine Motor Take-Home Bags

If you’re short on time and/or space, sending home fine motor bags is an idea to explore.  You can keep this simple by creating a handful of fine motor bags and rotating them around your students.  Ask families to complete the activity and return by a certain date or the next school day.  Be sure to keep a checklist of who has had each bag.

You could also do a monthly thematic fine motor bag consisting of a few fine motor activities.  Consider putting together two bags to ensure each student has a chance to bring the bag home every month.

Click here to download some free labels from Dropbox! These work great for your fine motor tubs, centers, or take-home bags!

4. Fine Motor Tasks for Early Finishers

Another idea is to have fine motor tubs or bags and allow students to work on the activities when they’re finished with their work. One downside to this is that it doesn’t give all students an equal opportunity to work on them.  If your students are working on fine motor activities at other points in the day, then using them as early-finisher activities in addition to that could work well!

Fine Motor Tools:

I’m frequently asked for recommendations on materials for morning tubs and fine motor activities. You can click on the image below to see my top recommendations on Amazon.

5. Print-and-Prep Fine Motor Activities

If you have enough on your plate and are looking for thematic/seasonal packs, I have several that you can just print and prep! Each pack has approximately 10 fine motor activities that are kid-tested and approved. 

Have Fun with Fine Motor Activities in Kindergarten!

I hope this post has given you some ideas and inspiration about fine motor work in your classroom!  If you are able to use any of these ideas or activities, be sure to tag me on Facebook (Katie Roltgen Teaching) or Instagram (@kroltgen).

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Printable Fine Motor Activities