As your little one progresses through their early years education, you may hear the term ‘fine motor skills’ used. A child’s Fine Motor skills are vital to their development. As Early Years teachers, one of our main goals is to help our children to develop these skills as early as possible.

But what actually are fine motor skills and why are they so important?

Fine motor skills are the extent to which your child can control their small hand movements that support them to feed themselves, get dressed, and ultimately learn to write. These skills develop gradually and start at birth.

In the classroom, we often find that children that are struggling with their handwriting or their pencil grip often need to take a step back and work on their fine motor skills. They may not have developed the strength in their hand or the neural pathways necessary to make those little precise movements.

Fine motor skills can’t begin to develop until your little one has enough core and shoulder strength to stabilise themselves. So fine motor skills follow the development of a child’s gross motor skills.

In early years, alongside fine motor building activities, we give children lots of opportunities for moving their whole bodies, including running, jumping, and balancing. Children also need to develop a sense of touch and an idea of how objects respond to their manipulations. This type of sensory play is vital in any Early Years environment. We also provide children with lots of opportunities to play that strengthen their hand and finger muscles and encourage them to use their hands in different ways.

If you are eager to get your little one writing, ensuring they have good fine motor skills is essential as this not only will help them with letter formation but will give them the stamina to write for extended periods of time when they are ready.

Children use their fine motor skills at home in a variety of ways. Dinner time is an excellent opportunity for fine motor development and while it’s messy, it’s important to let children do as much as possible themselves! It’s also important to encourage your little one to dress themselves as much as possible, including zips, buttons and shoes.

Fine motor skills are an essential building block of child development. In a school environment we have a variety of strategies to encourage these skills. To gain access to some of these and give your little one the best possible start to early writing, we have a teacher-written Fine Motor Skills course that will help your child develop this essential building block to writing. We have included lots of activities to get you started and some downloadable worksheets to support you.

So if you’d like to get your child off to a flying start with their writing click the button below and check out our Fine Motor Skills Course today.