If you’re a parent, you probably have thought about what motor skill milestones your kid has reached or needs to reach. The main types of motor skills are gross motor skills and fine motor skills. Gross motor skills have to do with the basic functions of your overall body: standing, sitting, walking, running, jumping ect.. On the other hand, fine motor skills focus on small movements with your hands or feet.
Many parents spend tons of money buying toys that advertise help developing these skills, and spend so much time worrying about forcing their kids to sit through silly tasks to help them reach their recommended milestones. I wanted to push past the norms, and created these (mostly) out of the box ways to teach your kid motor skills.
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Gross Motor Skills:
First off, I broke the gross motor skills into smaller sections. Obviously, you have standing and walking coming as big milestones that many focus on first. Since these are common milestones that you your kid really will figure out and do on their own time, I decided to focus on the complicated ones that come next: Coordination, Body Awareness, Balance, and Controlled Large Muscle Movement.
Coordination-
You want your kid to be able to coordinate the different parts of their body and learn how to move with their surroundings. Here’s a list of activities I did with my son to work on his coordination:
Block Towers:
We have to have at least 4 different kinds of buildings blocks. I know this one isn’t very out of the box, but Ollie LOVES building, and the coordination skills that I’ve seen him grow through playing and stacking blocks are amazing! As much as it seems basic, if you haven’t tried playing with blocks, I would definitely give it a go. You can keep it cheap and simple with this block set from amazon for only $15.
Balancing Objects:
If you don’t want more toys cluttering your space, or don’t have the money to invest right now, use other options to build towers! We actually ended up buying blocks because we saw how much Ollie loved stacking other random objects. Books, toys, shampoo bottles in the bathroom, anything he could get his hands on! A personal favorite of mine became stacking rocks at the beach. We actually started a new morning routine of getting up and hitting the beach first thing. We’d sit on the rocks and while I sipped some coffee, Ollie would quietly stack rocks. It was so much fun! And I really started to see an improvement in his coordination after some consistency with practicing.
Obstacle Courses:
Obstacle courses are such a fun one! You can create box mazes, small objects for your little to practice stepping or jumping over (it takes a lot of coordination just for them to practice stepping over an object if they’re just learning how to walk!), or even having to walk around or climb over something. Adding fun extras like making them spin in a circle at certain parts or do a silly dance can also help teach them how to move their body in certain ways. This really gives you a chance to get creative. Think about what you see your child struggling with (I.e. stepping over objects unassisted) and make sure to include something that makes them practice that skill!
Balloon Toss:
Notice: balloons can be a HUGE choking hazard so PLEASE never let your little ones be around balloons unsupervised.
This one really works on their hand-eye coordination! Just take a balloon and blow it up, and then toss it in the air! See if you can play a version of keep it up or pass with them so they can learn to hit the balloon as it floats down. This one was a huge hit, and also a huge success! Because the balloon floats down slowly, it makes it easier for your baby to keep their eye on it and gives them more time to hit it back up. They have to practice coordination, but they have no idea it’s anything other than a fun game.
Body awareness-
One thing I noticed my son needed to work on was his body awareness. He would literally walk right into things or trip over things that were obviously in his path. At first I was nervous about why he did that until I learned, just like everything else, spatial awareness of their own body is one thing kids need to learn! So, we began practicing body awareness.
Climbing Rocks:
When we began our morning beach routine we also started to include rock climbing. Obviously he was very supervised, but letting him figure out how to climb over rocks really made him think about where in space his body was, and again, he loved it!
Other Climbing Toys:
On the same note, other climbing toys do the same thing! You don’t even really need toys when you have plenty of climbing equipment around your house. We started climbing in our couch, some boxes, step ladders, you name it! Eventually though, we did get a pikler triangle for our play room and man does that thing give us hours and hours of entertainment. I would recommend it from just how fun it is, but it also comes with the added benefit of helping your child work on their gross motor skills! Ollie had to learn how to climb using different methods, step over things, and move his body from one position to another as he worked his way through various structures we made with our climbing gym. Another great one is stepping stones! Similarly they teach your kid to be aware of where their body is and they also cross over into helping your work on the next motor skill they’re going to work on: balance.
Balance-
Balance Beam:
We have a friend who has this balance beam inside their kids bedroom. Play dates at their house rock! It’s so much fun watching the kids take turns learning how to balance and walk across the tight space, and have a blast while doing it! It’s a great skill for them to have and honestly pretty silly to watch them learn.
Curb Walking:
At the moment, buying a balance beam like that is a little out of our budget, so we make it work without one! My son lovesss walking along the edge of any curb, planter, or any small straight object like that. I won’t lie, even as an adult I find myself doing it too. So, we often just go to parks or on walks around our neighbors and practice our balance that way!
Fine Motor Skills:
Fine motor skills can take a bit longer to develop than gross motor skills, but that makes sense! It’s hard to get precise movements down, and it definitely takes tons and tons of practice. The main fine motor skills that we’ve taken time to focus on include writing, the pincer grip, and basic hand movements.
Writing-
Learning how to write includes both learning how to grasp an object in your hand correctly, and also learning how to move that object in the correct motion to write something with it. With this one, don’t let yourself get frustrated. It really comes down to practice, practice, practice. Here are some of the most fun ways we’ve practiced writing, moving beyond the basic paper and pen.
Coloring on the Walls:
I find this one so fun because it seems so taboo! We use these washable, non-toxic crayons and color over EVERYTHING. Drawing on the walls has become one of our most loved activities. And these crayons wipe off so easy with a baby wipe. So anything you can easily wipe with a baby wipe is pretty much fair game! We actually started practicing our letters and now my 20-month old can name half the alphabet and their sounds just from having silly wall drawing time!
Whiteboard Drawing:
If you don’t want to risk the wall coloring, try a white board! We got one of these too and it’s the same activity in a different form. So basically a whole new fun game! We like to draw a lot of pictures on our white board because we can leave them out for awhile to look at, which Ollie loves!
Writing in the Dirt/Sand:
If you’re looking for more outside activities, this is a great two for one. Whether at a beach or a park, grabbing a stick and writing in the sand or dirt is a blast! We usually don’t draw too many common shapes or letters, but practicing swirls and lines with a stick still teaches the same necessary skills!
Pincer grip-
The pincer grip is one of the first fine motor skills you’ll probably be working on with your babies. There are tons of toys that advertise help in developing this skill. There are plenty great options that we used that I would totally recommend! We loved our Pincer Puzzles, the Lovevery Playkits had some great options, and this pincer grip toy was tons of fun! But of course I wanted my son to get more practice beyond just the basic pincer grip toys, so here’s what we did:
Collecting Objects on Nature Walks:
This one is so fun because it allows you to get some much needed nature time as well! We love to collect leaves particularly because we bring them home to do finger paints on later! You also can collect rocks, little acorns, sticks, or really anything you want! The best part is not only are your kiddos getting nature time and practicing their pincer grip picking things up, but you can also use what they collect for projects later on. In addition to painting leaves, we’ve pressed flowers, glued sticks to paper, made shapes from other plants, and made a fairy garden! Endless possibilities!
Busy Toys:
Busy toys were such a great discovery for us, particularly for travel! They were soooo entertaining for my son and also a great way for them to practice their pincer grip while sitting still! We got this busy book from Amazon and our library has this awesome busy toy in their kids section that we love to take advantage of. There’s all sorts of great skills for them to practice, such as pulling things on and off the pages, zippers, buttons, ties, ect.
Hand movement-
General hand movements are also important for your little to grasp! These are movement beyond the holding a pencil and the pincer grip. I went to find other hands on activities that would entertain my baby that used different motions than the previous ones. Here’s what I came up with:
Play Dough Objects and Sand Castles:
With this they can actually BUILD something. Learning to use their hands to create something is such a useful skill they can take anywhere in life. As they get older this can be expanded to knitting, crocheting, woodworking, cooking, or anything really. All of which are fantastic skills for your kiddos to have. So starting them off with play dough or sand and letting them create with their hands is a great space to practice. You can also check out my favorite homemade play dough recipe here if you want to save some money and make some at home.
Busy Toys:
Busy toys make another appearance here because they’re just so versatile. You can have magnets, dolls, dress up activists, or anything else depending on which toy you get. If you head over to Etsy you’ll see sooooo many creative options for busy toys you can order to entertain your little ones in so many ways! Or, if you’re particularly crafty, make your own!
Gardening:
If you’re not afraid of a little dirt, one I highly, highly recommend is gardening! Let your toddlers help you fill pots with dirt, stick in seeds or repot plants, and then practice their pouring skills with a watering can! They’ll have a blast, get some nice grounding time with nature, all while practicing different movements and motions with their hands. An added bonus of this one is you can grow food from this too! Then your kids can practice picking fruits and veggies off the plants later on and you can have a small sustainable garden to enjoy at your home too. We don’t have much space to garden where we’re currently living but that doesn’t stop us from having tomato and strawberry plants on our balcony!