Fine Motor Skills Activities
for Older Kids

Older children require a slightly different approach with fine motor skills activities.

• Quick fine motor ideas with everyday objects
• Try plasticine  
• Scissor cutting
• Try this fine motor kit  

Quick Fine Motor Ideas With Everyday Objects

These fine motor activity ideas can be used as a quick break between school tasks or before beginning a handwriting or music lesson.

Crumple Paper

Crumple a sheet of newspaper or scrap paper in the hand until it is a tight ball. Try to do it while holding the hand in the air. That way, the fingers work harder!

Tip: Do this whenever paper needs to be discarded - wad it up and toss it in a basket!

Walk a Ball

Use the fingers to “walk” a small ball up and down the legs. Your child could walk the ball up one leg, across the tummy and down the other leg. Most kiddies balls work well.

Make it harder: Ask your child to use just the tripod fingers (thumb, index and middle fingers) to walk the ball.

Twirl a Beanbag

Using a basic kids' beanbag, position the fingers under the beanbag, holding it level. Keeping the bean bag level, slowly rotate the bean bag 360 degrees, using the fingers and thumb to manipulate it.

Bank Some Money

Have your child hold some coins in the hand and then work them up to the fingers one by one to push them through the slots of a money bank. Side slots get the fingers working hardest.

Tip: Recycle a container to use instead of a money bank!

Tip:

Keep the resources for these activities in a handy container to access whenever your child needs a break during schoolwork/homework.

Here's what your fine motor skills activities box could look like!

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Plasticine Fine Motor Skills Activities

Your child can then use the balls as part of a model, or simply make 10 balls as a daily exercise.

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Scissor Cutting

You'd be surprised at how many high school teens struggle to cut neatly with scissors! I always emphasise the importance of cutting with scissors for preschoolers, but exactly the same principles apply for older kids!

Cutting with scissors strengthens the hand muscles, and also helps the child to isolate the movement of the tripod fingers (thumb, index and middle fingers for holding the pencil) from the rest of the hand. Getting lots of opportunities to cut with scissors can help improve your child's fine motor skills.

• Whenever you need something cut out, ask your child to do it - whether cutting open packets of food, cutting work related papers, snipping festive decor or cutting gift wrap, call your child to do it!
• Try kirigami - this is the art of cutting and folding paper, and some examples on this page make lovely decorative ideas.
• If you are really stuck for scissor cutting ideas, you could try some of the downloadable e-books on this page of my site - lots of fun end products that can motivate reluctant kids to cut with scissors.

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Fine Motor Kit

Pocket Full of Therapy have a really fantastic little kit called the In-Hand Manipulation Kit. It was put together by an Occupational Therapist and contains a variety of objects that you can use to challenge an older child.

My own kids (middle and junior high) still enjoy the challenge of these fine motor skills activities. You can view the kit over here and use the coupon code below to get a discount if you spend $35 or more! (This is an affiliate link to a product I use.)

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I personally find it very helpful to incorporate fine motor skills activities into my kids' daily routine. In this way, they see the activities as hand exercises, rather than "activities". As homeschoolers, we tend to do them before handwriting tasks. Kids who attend school can do them as a regular part of their afternoon activities, such as before settling down to homework, or after an afternoon snack.

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