Kids Art | Helps Fine Motor Muscle Development

By Spramani Elaun

In this blog, I’m going to share some great facts and tips on how art making can help young kids build fine motor skills.

I’ll also give you some simple art project ideas to start with.

After years of observing my young students I’ve discovered art making actions can help students get fine motor control.

In my classes I teach clay play modeling and sensory painting regularly, so it’s something I’ve notice can happen quickly over a short period of time.

Increasingly over the years preschoolers through kindergarten are coming to my classes with little to no finger or hand strength capabilities.

It’s important to understand fine motor development plays a huge role in a child’s daily life as they grow and go to school.

Having the strength to press, push, pull, or squeeze helps kids learn to dress themselves, tie their own shoes, how to eat without assistance, play outdoors safely, how to hold a pencil to write, or even doodling with a crayons.

Fine motor development helps with healthy cognitive processing at early ages.

It’s been reported by education research and teachers that students are entering schools more and more not capable of doing these simple task.

Teachers are also reporting these basic skills are lacking and slowing down student progression in the classrooms.

There’s been a number of reasons reported why this might be happening, like students spending more time indoors on tablet screens, infants starting out lying on their backs more, rather than on their tummies to help lower Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), or parents simply doing more for their toddlers because they worry about safety or messes occurring.

There hasn’t been any official research pin pointing the exact causes to date.

What ever the reasons, the good news is parents, daycare providers and early childhood educators can offer art activities as a way to build those small fine motor muscles.

Parents who put their young children through my art program reported back, they were surprised their child was ready and willing to participate in the art activities I offered.

I did have many parents admit they didn’t think or trust their child was mature enough to do some activities, like use safety scissors or a paintbrush independently.

I’ve also discovered when working with older grade students that do lack art making experience, 1 out of 5 of those students usually has sensory issues to touching and manipulating art materials.

My older students with less fine motor control, usually also lacks in spatial experience knowledge, which effects a child’s ability to imagine conceptual ideas for planning.

In other words, if a child has not physically built or created with their own sensory system, they cannot understand spatially how ideas come together and resist taking risk in creating them.

Making art at young ages leads to healthy cognitive sensory development and fine motor muscle to create later on with.

Traditionally I start my students out with clay modeling, paintbrush stroking and safety scissor activities which develops fine motor strength quickly.

So here are some great art projects to start toddlers thru primary grades. These types of art making will help develop fine motor control and small muscles in fingers and hands.

In this blog, I shared some great facts and tips on how art making can help young kids build fine motor skills.

If you would like to learn more about my natural art method, read more of my blog posts here or buy my books at the links below.

Fine Motor Art Projects:

Clay Modeling

Clay Pressing Sculptures

Clay Cookie Cutter Shapes

Beeswax forming

Stamping

Potato Stamping

Bubble Wrap Stamping

Squeeze Bottle painting

Dropper Painting

Sponge painting

Sponge stamping

Crafting with string

Sticker Collage & Painting

Gluing sticks and Recycled Scraps

Beading & Stringing

Painting

Color Theory Painting

Crayon Rubbing

Print Making

Popsicle structures

Lego building

Paper crafting

Origami

Paper Airplane Making

Snowflake Paper Cutting

Glue Bottle Art

Cutting foam fabric

Yarn Twigs & String

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