As children grow, they face more and more everyday tasks that require well-developed fine motor skills. Whether we’re talking about the simple act of zipping up their jackets or something like writing exercises, there is always a certain amount of hand-eye coordination involved. So it becomes really important for your toddler to be able to complete tasks like these in order to avoid bursts of frustration and maybe even a decline in confidence.
Obviously, you will want to pick the right childcare for your toddler, one that puts an appropriate emphasis on developing their fine motor skills in a fun and engaging way. This way, your toddler will be ready for primary school when the time comes and will be more motivated to make that transition and tackle more demanding tasks. Furthermore, developed fine motor skills will allow the toddler to display their full academic potential instead of being hampered. That’s why you need the type of childcare for your toddler that fully understands all of this.
Fortunately, developing fine motor skills doesn’t have to be difficult or stressful. There are plenty of activities out there your toddler will enjoy and through which they will be improving their skills without even realizing it. You can do them together at home, but some of them are often included in a childcare’s curriculum, too. They can stimulate multiple senses at the same time and thus a good childcare for your toddler will be the one that helps them grow in several ways. Some of the most common exercises for fine motor skills include:
- finger painting
- stacking blocks or cups
- creating things out of playdough
As you can see, these are fairly simple activities that are bound to grab a Champ’s attention. Honestly, who doesn’t like finger painting? As a matter of fact, colour can be of vital importance in this kind of exercises because children can arrange various objects that require fine motor skills according to colour, which can be a simple but surprisingly fun exercise. You will find good childcare for your toddler always offering something like this.
Apart from that, of course, there are plenty of exercises you yourself you can do with your Champ at home. All sorts of everyday objects that you have around the house can be used, all it takes is a little imagination. So, if you want to help your Champ grow more dexterous, here area a few suggestions on what to do:
- threading pasta
You probably have some pasta in your cupboard. If it’s of the penne variety (or any kind of other pasta with holes in it), you can use it to let your toddler thread something through it. You can use things like yarn, shoelaces, some kind of thin rope… anything that can go through the pasta and is easy enough to handle. And if the pasta is in different colours, even better!
- straws and a pasta strainer
The same effect can be achieved if you give your Champ some straws to thread through the holes of your pasta strainer. Obviously, check if the straws fit, but they are generally an excellent tool for practising fine motor skills because they are relatively firm and easy to handle but still require a fair amount of dexterity to put them in the right hole
- pinching practice
Pinching is a great way to develop motor skills, too. Apart from precision, pinching helps develop muscles and there are loads of ways to do it. The toddler can, for example, try to make something out of playdough and then try to add some details by pinching it. Furthermore, they can try and use clothes pegs to pick up various objects and transfer them into the right container. And if you’re feeling creative, you can make something with velcro on it to let the toddler stick it to various surfaces and then remove it by pinching it.
So, there are certainly many different easy fine motor skills exercises that can go a long way in helping the development of your child. MindChamps Australia takes all of that into consideration and chooses activities that will benefit their Champs the most. This is important to emphasize because their curriculum is based on more than a decade of dedicated research that has covered a variety of scientific fields such as neuroscience, psychology and education. Therefore, you can be certain that the fine motor activities toddlers do there have been carefully analysed and deemed most beneficial for children. But that’s just one of the aspects of a young Champ’s mind that is developed in each MindChamps Australia centre. That, however, is a story for another text.
I’m a 20-something stay-at-home mother and wife. I have an amazing husband, a beautiful daughter, two loving dogs, and a lazy cat. I wouldn’t change my life for anything! I love to read, listen to music, cook and blog!
Speak Your Mind