The 10 Best Fine Motor Toys for Preschoolers & Kindergarten Students
Learn more about the best fine motor toys for four to six year-olds…
In the past few years, I have noticed a serious decline in the area of fine motor development in my incoming kindergarten students. In a world where our young learners know how to navigate a tablet with ease, we now see children struggle with basic tasks such as writing, cutting, and drawing. As a kindergarten teacher and a mom, I am committed to helping both my students and my own children develop these crucial fine motor skills.
Eliminating all screen time may seem impossible these days. A more practical idea is to try matching every minute on screens with equal time spent on fine motor play. There are so many wonderful toys and resources on the market that make fine motor play fun. The teacher in me loves the fine motor toys that incorporate learning through hands-on activities. In this blog post, I will show you what I think are the 10 best fine motor toys for preschoolers and kindergarten students. These toys are perfect for use in the classroom or at home with your own children!
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1. Word Construction
This Word Construction Set incorporates fine motor and reading at the same time! Teachers can use these fun corkscrews for fine motor centers as well as small group reading activities. Parents can use these at home to work on word building while building hand strength. My students love using these, and I just started using them with my 4 year-old son.
2. Letter Construction Set
This Letter Construction Set is one of my favorites! It reinforces proper letter formation and letter recognition for both uppercase and lowercase letters.
3. Attrilinks
Attrilinks are a great way to introduce geometry to your students or children. They help kids grasp the concept of shapes and their attributes through hands-on activities.
4. Play Foam Shape and Learn Numbers Set
This is another set that I use both at home with my youngest and in the classroom with my kindergarteners. Kids love the shaping foam! It is a wonderful sensory activity. The cards are great for practice with one-to-one correspondence as well as shape and number identification and formation.
5. Jumbo Reading Rods
Jumbo reading rods are one of my top teacher-mom picks! I like how the blocks include both uppercase and lowercase letters. I use these for word building activities. You can have your child or students build CVC words and write the words on a whiteboard for handwriting practice. My son likes to connect the blocks in ABC order to make a giant cube tower.
6. Super Sorting Pie
Sorting is one of the first concepts to teach young learners in math. The Super Sorting Pie is a math and fine motor must-have! Using tweezers to build hand strength, children learn to sort by numbers, colors, or by the type of fruit.
7. Lowercase Lacing Alphabet
Learning lowercase letters is often challenging for many children. This lacing set is great for having children work on letter recognition and building words.
8. Helping Hands Fine Motor Tool Set
The possibilities are endless with this Helping Hands Tools Set! I even recommend this set to my students who really struggle with fine motor skills. The scoopers are a kid favorite! Tweezers are perfect practice for moving and counting objects, and the dropper is fun for science experiments like mixing different colors of water.
9. Wikki Stix
You can’t go wrong with Wikki Stix. Students can bend these any way to form letters, words, shapes, and more!
10. STEM BINS
Kids love STEM these days! This STEM BINS SET includes 18 different activities perfect for challenging young learners. I have a set of these at home. Just the other day, I grabbed one of these bins to take to a restaurant. I’m so glad I did. My son loved the hands-on fun, and he played with the bin materials until his food came.
Whether you are a teacher or a parent (or both), I hope that this post has inspired you to try what I feel are the 10 Best Fine Motor Toys for Preschoolers and Kindergarteners.
Casey Stewart is a kindergarten teacher and founder of Kindergarten Korner. She has 17 years of experience teaching in kindergarten, first, and second grade. She created http://www.kindergartenkorner.com to inspire fellow educators and help guide parents and homeschooling families on their journey throughout the magical kindergarten experience. Casey also has three kids of her own at home. Learn more about her HERE.
