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  • Hi, I'm Vicky, the founder and content creator at Mess For Less. If you are looking for family-friendly recipes, recipes that kids can make, and play and learning activities for kids, you will find them at Mess For Less. I invite you to learn more about me. Thanks for stopping by!

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    Fine Motor Skills Activity for Preschoolers

    Published: Nov 17, 2014 · Modified: Oct 28, 2022 by Vicky · This post contains affiliate links.

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    One of the pitfalls of blogging about kids activities is that your kids end up expecting activities. A lot. My four year old asked me to make an activity for her the other day. I didn't have anything in the hopper and didn't have a lot of time to prepare something, so I grabbed some items from my craft closet and gave them to her, hoping she would figure out something to do with them. Yes, my kids are basically running the blog now. I was pretty proud of the Fine Motor Skills Activity for Preschoolers that she came up with. We love working with q-tips and straws as you can see from our Q-Tips and Straws fine motor activity. They are affordable items to have on hand and can be used in an endless amount of ways. If you have a child in preschool and you want to provide them with fun fine motor practice, be sure to check out 18 Fine Motor Skills Activities for Kids for more inspiration.

    Fine Motor Skills Activity for Preschoolers - fine motor skills are so important for little learners. Using a few inexpensive items, kids can have fun while building skills.

    You will need:

    • Foam
    • Colorful milkshake straws
    • Q-Tips
    • Scissors

    I cut some straws into smaller pieces and left some intact. I gave these to my preschooler, along with a piece of foam and q-tips. I was curious to see what she would come up with.

    Almost immediately, she started pushing the small straws into the foam. She didn't make a pattern with the colorful straws, but this can be a great way to practice pattern making as well.

    fine motor skills fun

    When she finished with the short straws she added some long straws to the back. She then decided to see if she could drop q-tips into the longer straws.

    fine motor skills activity

    This was so much fun that she kept dropping q-tips into the long straws curious to see how many she could fit into each one. You can encourage kids to estimate by having them guess how many q-tips they think will stack up in a long straw.

    open ended activity for kids

    She still had lots of q-tips left over, so she decided to carefully place them in the short straws. In addition to working on fine motor skills, this activity is great for practicing hand eye coordination.

    child playing with straws and q-tips

    When she was done with that, she pulled out all the straws and tried pushing the q-tips into the foam first. So much fun was had covering the q-tips with the large straws. She laughed as she said that she was hiding the q-tips.

    Kids activities don't need to involve a lot of prep work for you. Sometimes the best activities are those kids come up with themselves.

    fine motor activity for kids

    For more fine motor skills activities check out:

    Fine Motor Skills Counting Activity       

    Fine Motor Straw Necklace

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    Reader Interactions

    Comments

    1. Melissa Droegemueller

      June 29, 2015 at 8:51 pm

      Fun! I need to get some foam. 🙂

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    Hi, I'm Vicky, the founder and content creator at Mess For Less. If you are looking for family-friendly recipes, recipes that kids can make, and play and learning activities for kids, you will find them at Mess For Less. I invite you to learn more about me. Thanks for stopping by!

    Spring Activities and Recipes

    • simple meringue recipe 1
      Spring Meringue Recipe
    • no bake twinkies cake
      No Bake Twinkies Cake for Spring
    • Spring preschool worksheets3
      Free Spring Preschool Worksheets
    • kids made bird seed wreath 1
      Kid Made Bird Seed Wreath

    Kids Recipes

    • easy owl rice cakes 8
      Easy Owl Rice Cakes
    • Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Crescents 8
      Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Crescents
    • monster cookie energy balls 12
      Monster Cookie Energy Balls
    • kid made english muffin pizza 11
      Kid Made English Muffin Pizzas

    Popular Recipes

    • crack chicken casserole 10
      Crack Chicken Casserole
    • overnight egg casserole 12 1
      Overnight Egg Casserole
    • toasted italian sandwich 2
      Toasted Italian Sandwich - Food Fun Friday
    • chicken broccoli alfredo bake 6
      Chicken Broccoli Alfredo Bake

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