Acknowledgements - gapitc

Fine motor skills
Activities and Strategies
for Development
Dropper Painting
Ahead of time, clean out three or four old medicine bottles with droppers.
Fill the bottles with different watercolor paints.
Cover a table with newspaper or plastic cloth and give your child a paper towel.
Encourage her to squeeze a drop of color on the paper towel and watch it
spread out.
Invite your child to squeeze a different color near that spot and watch what
happens when the colors mix!
Shape and Bake
Find cookie cutters with shapes such as a star, a heart, and an animal. Buy some
ready-to-bake cookie or bread dough or make your own.
Sprinkle flour onto the kitchen counter, table or mat.
Let your child help roll out a large circle of the dough using a rolling pin.
Encourage him to select shapes one at a time and press them into the dough.
Show him how to twist his wrist to separate the shape from the rest of the
dough.
Lift the cookie out and place the shape on a tray with a spatula.
Before putting the cookies into the oven to bake, ask your child to try to match
the cut out shape with the shape outline in the remaining dough.
If he would like, let him try to put the cookie shape back in place like a puzzle.
Bake and enjoy!
A variation of this activity is to use play dough or “model magic.”
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