It is so important for students to practice fine motor skills every day, especially in kindergarten! At this age, students are still physically growing and developing, including those important hand and wrist muscles that are the base of fine motor skills. As teachers, we need to provide them with opportunities to help them strengthen those muscles and their fine motor skills as often as possible. By connecting fine motor strengthening activities with an academic topic we can get the biggest bang for our buck. To help you do just that, I’m sharing 12 of my favorite fine motor alphabet activities!
Incorporating fine motor skills into academics is so important for younger students and has so many benefits. Hand strength and control are a foundation for so many things that they will do in school and throughout their day-to-day life. Some of the benefits of including these skills in your lessons are:
- Helps students with reaching, grasping, and moving objects
- Improves hand-eye coordination
- Helps develop handwriting and drawing skills
- Promotes independence and body awareness
- Helps build their self-esteem
One of the best ways that we can help our students build and practice these fine motor skills is to practice them daily. But don’t worry, these hand muscle strengthening activities are among my students’ favorites. Because of this, I love incorporating these fine motor activities into our daily lessons any chance that I get.
One of my favorite ways to incorporate fine motor skills is by combining the activities with our alphabet practice. Letter recognition activities do not have to be endless flashcards. There are so many ways to make learning letters fun and hands-on while incorporating some fine motor practice along the way. Luckily, I’ve nailed down some of my students’ absolute favorites. These activities are my go-to for targeting both alphabet practice and fine motor skills. Talk about a win-win!
1. Fine Motor Playdough Activities
Ok, what kid doesn’t love playdough?! Playdough is a great tactile tool for students to use to strengthen the muscles in their hands which will help improve their handwriting and cutting skills. Students love building letters with playdough by rolling and shaping the dough to form and name each letter they create.
We use these mats in my room all the time since they are so effective at helping students master new letters while targeting those fine motor skills. I especially love to use these toward the afternoon when everyone is a bit tired, restless, and in need of a “brain break”.
2. Stickers
If your kids are anything like mine, then they are obsessed with stickers. I can put out some sticker sheets and they are gone that same day. Having kids peel the stickers off of the sheets and matching them carefully on a line or inside a circle is great for fine motor and hand-eye coordination.
To do this, I just grab my favorite alphabet building mats, give my kids stickers, and let them get to work. This is a great activity to add to your center rotation and it is quick and easy to prepare.
Not only does this activity work on fine motor skills but it is also a great way to practice letter identification and beginning sounds too.
3. Building Bricks
One of the best ways to get your students excited to learn is to break out manipulatives that seem more like toys than learning tools. Case in point- building bricks for the win! My kids always race to get to the building bricks bin first! They just love stacking and building different creations with these so why not incorporate them into letter practice? Students will look at the letter on the mat and recreate the letter using the building bricks. Then they will practice finding and writing the letter on the mat. These are perfect for morning tubs as students trickle into the classroom!
4. Tearing Paper
Need something quick and easy? This idea will be your hero! A great way to help improve fine motor skills is having kids simply tear paper. This is great for their finger grip and strength. And the best part is it doesn’t have to be perfect!
I give kids a stack of construction paper squares and just let them tear tiny pieces from each sheet of paper. My rule is that the pieces they tear should be about the same size as their fingertip. This helps to avoid the super tiny pieces and also the giant ones.
Then they can use those tiny pieces of paper that they tore to fill in and cover different letters written on a different sheet of paper. While this can be easily done with a glue stick, adding a glue bottle will make it a bigger hand muscle workout. Students work on gently squeezing the glue bottle to make a small dot of glue.
I just love the fun and colorful alphabet that comes out of this activity. And. . . there are so many other skills you can target here too. This is a great activity for working on names, numbers, and sight words too!
5. Snap Cubes
Around here we’re big fans of snap cubes! My kids love playing and building with snap cubes. Putting the snap cubes together and separating them is a great way to build strength in their hands. Ummm, even sometimes I need to practice this skill because they can be tough to take apart! If you know, you know!
We use alphabet mats to combine fine motor skills with letter recognition. Students will roll the dice to see which color cube to pick to start making each letter. As a bonus, these activities are great practice for color recognition and one-to-one correspondence also! I love using them at the beginning of the year as we’re just getting started with these concepts.
6. Salt or Sand Tray
Have you ever tried using sand or salt to trace? These fine motor activities are always a favorite with my kids. Something about the feel of the sand running through your fingers fascinates the kids. It’s a texture that many of them have not had the opportunity to explore. Not to mention, it’s really calming as well!
To set up this activity, I place a thin layer of salt or sand in the bottom of my tray and give my kids alphabet cards. They pull a card, say the name of the letter, and then trace it with their finger in the tray. This low-prep center activity is always a favorite!
7. Scissor Skills
Many of the kids in my classroom have never once used scissors at the beginning of the year. While it can feel a little “dangerous”, with the right tools, there’s nothing to fear with this activity. I like to use small, plastic scissors that are “kid-safe” at the beginning of the year.
I like to print out large bubble letters to connect this to the alphabet. Students will practice cutting around the outside edge to cut out the letter. While this in itself is great practice, you can easily connect this activity with the paper tearing or stickers discussed above. Simply let students decorate their letter after they have cut it out.
8. Pattern Blocks
We love creating fun designs with pattern blocks, so why not use them to create letters too? I have some fun alphabet mats that I use for this activity. I like to laminate them so we can use them again and again!
To play, students will spin the spinner to see which pattern block to use first to build each letter. They will keep spinning until they have completed the letter. These mats are perfect to keep your morning bins or centers stocked and ready to go!
9. Shaving Cream
Anytime that I pull out the shaving cream, I can see my kids’ faces light up! They love rubbing the shaving cream all over the tables and squishing it between their fingers. And who could blame them? This is SO much fun! While they have it spread all over the table, this is a great time for them to practice forming and naming letters using the shaving cream with their fingers.
I start by giving them about one minute of “free exploration” time before we start with the letters. Then it becomes a shaving cream writing surface. I call out a letter and students write it in the shaving cream. I can walk around and see just how everyone is doing. I say erase and they smooth the shaving cream out of the desk and we start again with another letter.
The best part about this activity is that when you are done the desks are clean and the classroom smells great!
10. Dab a Letter
There’s always something fun about using Bingo Daubers or dot markers with any activity. They love being able to “smash” the dauber into the paper. Plus, as a bonus, it’s low prep and easy to pull out at a moment’s notice – always a win in my book!
We use Alphabet Mats for this activity as well. Students can use these daubers to “trace” the letter as they say the letter’s name and sound. I ask them to carefully line up the dauber in each circle to help target fine motor skills and hand control even further!
11. Hole Punching
Kids always feel special when they get to use “teacher tools.” Being able to use the teacher’s hole punch is a huge deal with my kids. It is also a great way to strengthen the muscles in their hands by having to keep squeezing the hole punch to make holes in the paper.
Grab a small sheet of paper and write letters all over the paper. Have the students find the letter that you name and punch a hole in the letter to identify the letter. This simple activity comes together in minutes and is always a favorite!
12. Fill a Letter
Confession… I may have a slight obsession with mini-erasers. Please tell me I’m not the only one?! They are just so darn cute! I am always trying to find fun ways for my kids to use them in different activities throughout the day. We love using these letter mats for so many different uses! They work great with mini erasers, but you can also use them with BINGO daubers, stickers, and more!
One of our favorite ways is practicing naming and forming each letter by placing one mini eraser in each dot. Kids can do this with their fingers, but for an added fine motor benefit, have them pick up the mini erasers with child tweezers. Then they lay them onto the letter mat to form the letter. So great for one-to-one correspondence also!
You can grab these to use in your classroom totally FREE! Just fill in the form and I will send them right over to you to use right away!
I hope these ideas inspired you to try some new fine motor alphabet activities with your kiddos! I think once you try a few from this list, you’ll be hooked too! Have fun with your students!
Save These Fine Motor Activities
Don’t lose track of these fun fine motor activities! Pin this post on your favorite alphabet or fine motor Pinterest board so you can come back to it later!
