As teachers, we know the importance of fine motor skills and their impact on classroom activities. Strong fine motor skills provide a foundation for many classroom tasks, such as writing, turning a page, cutting with scissors, and more. Each year, students enter the classroom with varying fine motor skills. Integrating printable fine motor activities is one way to support and improve fine motor skills in the classroom.
What are Fine Motor Skills?
Fine motor skills are tasks and movements you complete using small muscles in parts of the body. Cutting, grasping, squeezing, pinching, and tracing are all ways to strengthen fine motor skills involving the hands. These fine motor skills are important because they will later assist children with getting dressed, feeding themselves, writing their names, and playing an instrument.
Why are Fine Motor Skills Activities Important?
Success in school depends on good fine motor skills. Just like it takes time to build muscle and increase endurance through exercise, it also takes time to build and support fine motor skills. Practice is key for these skills to develop.
Printable Fine Motor Activities
Printable fine motor activities are a fun and simple way to provide this practice in the classroom. You can create printable fine motor activities with yarn and a hole punch. Students will have so much fun lacing and punching holes they won’t realize they are building their hand muscles. These fine motor skills activities can be used during centers, for early finishers, or at a station. They are quick, easy to change, and engaging!
Lacing Activities
Lacing activities help develop fine motor skills, which will later support other skills, such as tying shoes. To prep lacing cards, you will first print the large picture cards. Next, laminate them for durability and then punch out the holes. Provide your students with yarn or string, and they are ready to lace. Students will feed the yarn up and down through the holes around the shape.
Hole Punch Activities
A hole puncher takes printable fine motor activities to a whole new level. The new tool makes the activity special, and your students will be begging to use it! I use these hole punchers in my classroom. They are easy for little hands to squeeze and don’t jam.
For hole punch activities, you can print the small or large cards in color or black and white. You can cut around the shape or let your students cut them out to support their fine motor skills again. I typically copy many black and white cards, toss them in a basket with a hole puncher, and set them free.
Lacing and hole punch activities can be used year-round by changing the images. With sets for spring, summer, fall, or winter, you have enough printable fine motor activities for the whole school year!
Try hole punch and lacing activities with this free set, and if you are looking for more fine motor activities, you can learn more here.
