The lazy days of summer are the perfect time to work on your toddler’s fine motor skills. These summer fine motor activities are fun and will keep them entertained while helping them develop essential skills. Activities like scooping pompom ice cream, playing with Kinetic Sand, and using tongs to pick flowers help improve hand-eye coordination, dexterity, and precision. Keep reading for our top picks for summer fine motor skill activities!
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Summer Lesson Plans
Ice Cream Scoop
Summer Fine Motor Activities
Would you like one scoop or two? Or how about ten?
That’s the full scoop on how this ice cream sensory bin went down.
The kids took each other’s orders for which flavor they wanted (blueberry, lemon, cherry, mint, or vanilla) and then used handy scoopers to “scoop” the pompom ice cream balls into the cones.
The cones from Lakeshore’s ice cream stack game work great, incorporating counting and number identification, but you could use small cups, brown paper rolled into cones, or small obstacle course cones.
One of our favorite summer fine motor activities!
Materials:
Sandcastle Sensory Bin
Summer Sensory Bin
Have you tried Kinetic Sand?
If you haven’t, imagine the most magical sandcastles you’ve ever built. Everything just sticks together nicely (as seen from our seashell imprint). Plus, it never dries out, making it well worth that hard-to-find classroom budget.
Start with Kinetic Sand (or regular sand) for this sandcastle sensory bin. Then, add sparkling blue gems, seashells, miniature sandcastle buckets (they come with the Kinetic Sand), and people counters.
And pretty soon, your toddlers will be building pro-status sandcastles, working on fine motor skills through sensory play.
Materials:
- Kinetic Sand
- blue gems (Dollar Tree)
- seashells
- miniature sandcastle buckets
- people counters
Sidewalk Chalk
Summer Fine Motor Activities
Summer simplicity. That’s the key to actually enjoying your summer.
And there’s nothing simpler than pulling out a tub of pastel chalk.
The sticks soon transform into rainbows, hearts, suns, hopscotch, and obstacle courses, keeping the kiddos entertained for hours.
With each stroke, their colorful world grows and so do your toddlers’ fine motor skills. Yup, playing with chalk is beneficial for building those little muscles in little hands.
So when you need a quick win with simple summer activities, head outside with some chalk and sketch an afternoon of imaginative play.
Materials:
Flower Picking
Fine Motor Activity
There are two types of people in this world: people who love playing the game Operation (and get a thrill when you get that little zap) or people who are terrified of the game (and can’t stand the torture of those miniature heart attacks).
Well, Operation lovers, rejoice! Now you can teach your toddlers those essential tweezer skills, and pretty soon, they’ll be able to play a game of Operation with you.
This flower-picking activity improves your toddlers’ fine motor skills by using tongs or tweezers to pick the flowers out of the garden (green vines) without touching the tape (we called them spiderwebs).
And then, instead of transferring the flowers to a bucket, my kids decided to balance them on the masking tape.
Tip: The masking tape didn’t stick well to the tub I used, so I used packing tape to secure it on the outside.
Materials:
- plastic vines
- plastic flowers or silk flowers
- masking tape
- tongs
Pool Water table
Summer Sensory Bin
The three most important inventions in history:
Coffee machine.
Microwave.
Pool noodle floats for people counters.
Okay, maybe not the top three, but I was gleefully giddy when I came up with this idea for our pool sensory bin.
Sparked by our current obsession with swimming, my eldest designed this pool sensory bin, talking of blue water, splashing people, a waterslide, and beach balls – all of the things she loves about summer.
And now, with my latest invention, the people counters can float the summer days away, while your little ones can play the days away with this water sensory bin!
Materials:
- tub filled with blue water
- people counters
- Duplo Legos
- pool noodle
- alphabet beads (optional)
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MORE Summer Activities
It’s time to get excited about summer! This year, make sure to plan some fun fine motor activities for your toddlers. From picking flowers and building sandcastles to playing in a pool sensory bin and enjoying an ice cream scooping sensory bin, there are so many possibilities. And don’t forget the classics like sidewalk chalk art. What will you choose?
