Have you heard the terminology ‘fine motor skills’ and thought what in the heck does this mean?
It’s a term that is naturally used by many therapists, doctors, and other medical personnel.
When I heard this word being used over and over again when my nephew who has cerebral palsy was going through therapy, I was curious as to what it meant. Most importantly, what exactly was he doing during therapy to improve his fine motor skills?
I was inspired to write this post because of my nephew working day in and day out to strengthen his fine motor functions. This is such an important muscle group to develop and strengthen for a child to use during their everyday life (especially early on)
Throughout this post I am going to breakdown the most important information of what to know about the fine motor skills definition, the difference between fine motor vs. gross motor functions, activities to enhance these skills, and much more. 🙂
What is Fine Motor Skills?
Fine Motor skills are the muscle movements in the smaller muscles such as the hands, wrists, and fingers.
Children rely on these skills to use during everyday life and while in school. Other small muscles defined under fine motor functions includes movement of the toes and tongue.
These skills will improve overtime as a child develops and learns to strengthen these little muscles.
Why are Fine Motor Skills Important?
These important skills that involve a child’s small muscles in their hands, fingers, and thumb help them perform important tasks like getting dressed, feeding themselves, holding onto toys, writing, and drawing.
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Little hands need to develop strength. Doing engaging activities (which we’ll cover some FUN activities below) that allow a child the opportunity to fine tune these skills is very important early on during their development.
Now that you are familiar with what fine motor skills and the importance, lets get right into what the difference is between fine motor vs. gross motor functions.
Fine Motor vs. Gross Motor Skills
First, a motor skill is simply an action using your muscles.
The main difference between fine motor and gross motor functions is when you use your larger movements or gross motor skills vs. fine motor skills which are the smaller movements your body makes.
When your body uses the larger and stronger muscles of the body, you are developing your gross motor functions. Another way to visually understand gross motor functions is when your body makes bigger movements such as sitting up, rolling over, walking, crawling, running, or jumping.
It’s important to know that gross motor functions usually develop before fine motor functions.
Large muscles (such as the arms, legs, and trunk) will develop first, so typically, a child will master their gross motor skills such as walking first. Then, the small motor skills which require control and performing small tasks with the hands and fingers, will come after.
Age Fine Motor Skills Develop
When an infant is born up to two years old is when fine motor skills begin developing. When a child moves to use their hands and upper extremities, fine motor functions start to happen such as grasping for objects, reaching, and holding items.
The following is a guide to follow regarding fine motor skill milestones your child should be demonstrating between the ages of 0-2 years of age:
- 3 months old: holding objects in their hands.
- 5 months old: begins to reach and hold their toys.
- 6 months old: begins to follow objects with their eyes, reaches or grabs to put objects in their mouth, plays independently.
- 10 months old: can let go of toys, pick up small objects, or move objects from one hand to the other.
- 14 months old: can turn pages of a book.
- 16 months old: points with their index finger, uses both hands to play, can build with a few blocks.
- 24 months old: scribbles, turns knob, can self feed with minimal assistance, hold and drinks from cup independently, able to use signing to communicate.
It’s important to know that every child will develop at their own pace so do not be alarmed if your child is not 
meeting the above milestones in the recommended time frame (as this is just a guide to go by based upon the average of what a child normally demonstrates at that age).
Temporary delays should cause you no worry. However, if you are concerned or are noticing that certain milestones are not being met by your child, then that could indicate possible implications are present. If that is the case, lets quickly cover some warning signs to be on the lookout for by age:
- 0-6 months old: delayed ability to play independently, poor muscle control and coordination, delayed sensory development such as showing delayed responses when interacting with toys.
- 6-12 months old: finger strength is weak or poorly developed, difficulty grasping objects, delayed sensory development.
- 1-2 years old: poor development of hand and finger strength, delayed response when playing with toys and self care skills (such as eating independently).
7 Activities to Boost Fine Motor Functions
To enhance your little one’s fine motor functions, there are many FUN and engaging activities you can do right at home!
Here are 7 of the most popular activities recommended to work on improving your kiddo’s fine motor skills:
- Push lego parts together and pull them apart.
- Using silverware while eating.
- Playing with play dough helps improve hand muscles. For a homemade play dough recipe click here.
- Holding a pencil to write with.
- Using scissors to cut paper to strengthen the wrist, fingers, and hand muscles.
- Kitchen tongs which are a great tool to work on hand strength and control. During clean up time, allow your child the opportunity to use the ‘tongs’ to pick up their smaller toys. Not only will they have a blast playing with the tongs (most of the time), but they are working on improving their fine motor muscles.
- Playing with tape is an incredible fine motor activity. Have your child try to peel the tape and then place it on a sheet of paper. This activity takes some serious hand control!
Performing these small tasks and activities, will allow a child the opportunity to gain more confidence and independence!
Helpful Resources
#1. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides a ‘Milestone Checklist’ outlining what specific milestones a child should be doing at their age.
#2. Here is a helpful resource I recommend which is ALL about Fine Motor Skills. It’s a wonderful guide to reference as well as suggested activities you can do for ages 1 to 5 years old to enhance your little one’s fine motor functions.
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What a fantastic work you ladies are doing! If I encounter anyone who has or knows of someone who has a child with cp I will send them to your site!
What a great work you are doing! There is a lot of value in your post. You’ve helped your readers understand, very clearly, what fine motor skills are and what the differences are. Your list of milestones from 3 months to 24 months will be valuable for parents to detect if there are any serious concerns for which the child should be seen by a professional. The many exercises to help develop the fine motor skills is great for parents to understand simply how they can help their child develop. I love that!
You have word missing in one of the sentences just above your “Helpful Resources” section. It is the noun that would go between the words “little” and “work”.
Unless I’m missing something, I don’t think you’re doing much to maximize key words, which will drive more traffic to your site. I looked at a couple that you could use. “kids activities at home” has Traffic at 45 and QSR at 75. That’s good! “preschool activities at home” has Traffic at 48 and WSR at 39. That’s even better!
In the Wealthy Affiliate training Kyle says to have blog posts at at least 1,000 words. Google sees that length as coming from someone who is a thought leader and subject matter expert. I didn’t count your words but I don’t think you’re close to 1,000.
I hope this is helpful for you.
Glenn, amazing feedback! Thank you so much for taking the time to share this information with me. I will definitely look into those keyword suggestions for content creation! I greatly appreciate the insight. I did correct that grammatical error so thank you for pointing that out. My post currently has 1,114 words and.from my research for keywords “Fine Motor Skills Definition” it has traffic at 89 and QSR of 55 which seems to be decent, hopefully. 🙂 It’s great to connect with you!
Hi, Lindsey,
The first time I became acquainted with fine motor skills was through a cousin of mine. She was a teacher at an elementary school and her specialty was kids with learning problems of any kind. She had to deal with hyperactive kids, Down’s syndrome, etc.
As you pointed out, it’s important to understand not all kids are the same. Some will walk or talk faster than others. However, there comes a time when we should look for help.
You provided an excellent list of recommendations and resources. Just one question: Aren’t legos and play dough dangerous for little kids? What age do you recommend parents start using them?
Thanks for sharing.
Hi Enrique! Thanks for sharing your feedback. Great questions too. With jumbo legos and play dough, I would recommend adult supervision if under 3 years of age or when your child is able to fully understand the safety aspects when playing with these type of activities. The smaller lego pieces it’s recommended to have adult supervision before 4 years of age. Again, this is on a case by case basis and unique to the child’s development at that point in time. Please let me know if you have any other questions. 🙂
It must be a worry for parents when they are waiting for those milestones in their child´s life. Giving information on the milestones plus the link to the information from the CDC was a great idea. I would imagine that it´s quite normal for parents to talk and compare their children´s development.
Giving the defintion of Fine Motor vs Gross Motor skills also helps the reader to understand the subject matter of the article and to realize the importance of developing these skills.
Linking to the different products was great as it gives the reader a chance to find some good tools that would help a child in the development of fine motor skills.
Nicely set out article and very informative. All the best. Stephen.
Thank you so much for the kind words and feedback Stephen! I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts.
Hi Lindsey,
What a great article! It is very useful to parents with special needs children. I have come across the words motor skills before and it was used to describe learning skills of an adult. But your article taught more on the subject. There are two parts to learn, fine motor skills and gross motor skills. Special needs children like cerebral palsy definitely will benefit from extensive therapy and they will need the help from the time they are supposed to be showing some normal child movements and behavior. Infants develop muscles and start learning on their first year. Great information you have included on your post for parents who will need them. Very helpful overall! Thank you for sharing your article.
Evelyn
Thank you so much Evelyn for sharing your feedback! I appreciate you taking the time to comment on what you thought about the post. Hopefully, I was able to provide some insight as to what fine motor skills are vs. gross motor functions. It is such an important part of a child’s development to enhance their fine motor skills (especially for those with motor delays and cerebral palsy). It was great to connect with you!
Hi Lindsey,
Great post there for parents to read and learn. It is super interesting the fact that we develop larger movements before smaller ones. I thought it was the way around lol. It is amazing to see how a child progresses over time; each step does worth a celebration.
Thank you for providing the Milestone checklist. This will help parents with raising their awareness and make parenting become more fun and rewarding to observe the growth of their children.
Regards,
Tam.
Hi Tam! Thanks so much for sharing your feedback and taking the time to let me know what you thought about the post. 🙂
Fine motor skills are a critical part of a child’s development. One of my friends had to give extra attention to one of their children’s fine motor skills when they were very young. There was a lot of tactile objects and activities — one was as simple as a few boxes that were filled with different objects for the child to just run their hands through and touch (things like uncooked rice, beans, etc). Thanks for sharing the specific milestones that parents need to be mindful of as their child grows!
Thanks for sharing the tactile objects and activities Aly! My nephew loves to play with uncooked rice too.
I remembered when my nephew, TJ, was little he used to get frustrated all the time when I cannot trace the letters or coloring in the right place. However, this is the first time I have heard of gross motor skill. Thanks for the milestones! All the toys look fun but I think my other nephew may like the the scissors activity and tape more. He may throw a tantrum here and there lol Thanks for such an informative post!
Wonderful, hope your nephew will enjoy one or more of the activity suggestions! Glad you enjoyed the post and thanks for sharing your thoughts. 🙂
Wow. What a wealth of knowledge that has been outlined. There is so much fine details and information. Fantastic work on this article.
I really liked how you broke down it down into age groups. I find this extremely helpful know where in the timeline you would be seeing these key traits start to develop.
Thank you for this incredible article. I have learned a lot from it.
Best regards,
Jordan
Thanks so much for the kind words Jordan! I appreciate you sharing.