More Motor Skills

Often people will ask me for ideas to help their kids work on different motor skills. I thought I would post a few of them here.

Fine Motor (small muscles)
play dough, magnets, squeezing glue bottle, coloring/painting - these should be done on horizontal and vertical surfaces to develop different sets of muscles in the hand and wrist, tearing paper, dig in sand/dirt/rice, pour water/rice/sand/beans, string large beads/buttons, tweezers, eye dropper, spray bottle, opening/closing screw type lids, placing coins in piggy bank, picking up Cheerios one at a time, kneading bread, clothespins, hole punchers, lacing cards

We got a great idea for a craft from Family Fun magazine that utilized fine motor skills. It includes tearing paper, stirring, and pushing on a small area. Here are the official instructions: homemade ornament. We did not add the glitter because small shards of metal don't go well with kids who are likely to rub their eyes. They did take a lot longer to dry than listed as well, but the kids loved it.

This shows the very slow process of making these ornaments with a toddler. The grumpy toddler in the background is upset he has to wait his turn. (Might be best to watch without sound. You won't miss anything good.)

Gross Motor (big muscles)
crawling, walking, running, jumping, throwing, kicking, climbing, rolling, essentially anything that causes big movements
I will note that you should start working with your children on crossing the midpoint around the age of one. Basically if you draw a line down the middle of your child you want them to cross it as much as possible. Many children will pick up a ball on their right side with their right hand, transfer it to the left hand and set it on the left side. You want kids to pick up something on their right side and place it on the left without transferring hands. This helps train both sides of the brain to communicate together. The more these pathways are developed, the faster the brain will later be able to process more complex concepts (learning a foreign language, abstract math, art, music, etc). By the way, this isn't just for arms, ideally you want the legs to cross the midpoint as well. My kids love doing silly walks or crazy crawling.

My son's first juggling lesson courtesy of my husband. :-)

I just have to include one more video. Technically the crawling and walking are gross motor skills, but that's not what makes it cute. They are playing peek-a-boo with each other. I'm hiding because they stopped every time they saw me. My daughter, the queen of making things more difficult than they need to be, called this game "peek-a-duh-boo" and requested it often. Most kids shorten words to make it easier; my kid added a syllable in the middle. 

Peek-a-duh-boo!