Develop hand skills and hand muscles
- Change how activities are done to encourage finger use. For example, when playing with Lego® have your child rest his forearms on the table so that he uses his fingers to put the pieces together.
- Lace buttons with strings (Mr. Price/Dealz).
- Put pennies into a piggy bank.
- Play with finger puppets (IKEA).
- Use small tongs/tweezers to pick up cotton balls.
- Pegs on the side of a shoe box (clothes pegs – opportunities for maths counting and colour).
- Cut paper with a safe scissors.
- Jigsaws and plasticene.
Develop eye-hand coordination
- Roll, throw and catch large and small sized balls.
- Draw in a colouring book using thick crayons – encourage drawing inside the lines and scribble.
- Pour, ladle and spoon soapy water into different sized containers at the kitchen sink.
- Wooden blocks – set a timer. Who can build the tallest tower in one minute. This is a great way to develop hand to eye coordination.
- Digging and scooping are also activities that require little hands to hold, grasp and utilize their eyes in tandem.