Clever Fingers

At Churchill, we encourage children to begin every day with 'Clever Fingers' - a fun and highly-motivating strategy devised for schools to help pupils with fine motor development. We have acquired and created a huge range of different activity resources over the years and continue to seek new and engaging ideas to keep our sessions fresh and fun.

Our terrific TA team are going to lead with this page, adding their favourite recommendations for fine motor play your child can engage in at home. Most ideas can be adapted to include items found round the house so please don't think you need to purchase anything special! Old shoelaces, toilet roll tubes, paperclips, rice and dry pasta are just a few of the things we regularly hunt our homes for to replenish stocks in school .

Younger (and older!) siblings are definitely welcome to join in with these activities and we hope you enjoy them - let us know which you've loved and/or any suggestions we could add for others to try. Just 15 minutes a day will help the hand muscles to develop, exactly what is needed to support pencil grip for writing.

Construction toys

Building with construction toys like lego, dulplo and stickle bricks is great fun and helps to build up those fine motor skills. I wonder what you can build with construction toys you have at home? Could you build an animal? Or maybe a vehicle? Or a tower as tall as you!

Would love to see your creations.  

Buttons, laces and zips!

Learning how to do buttons, zips and shoe laces isn't just great for independence but also for developing fine motor skills. Below are some pictures to help you with this clever fingers activity. You could even try making a button snake!

It's challenge time!

Can you time how long it takes you to do up your coat, shoes or shirt?  Maybe you could have races with someone in your family! 

Or even dress a teddy in your school uniform ! 

(We would love to see you pictures and videos.)

Threading

You may have a threading kit at home but if not household items and food are great for clever finger activities. How about trying to thread spaghetti, pipe cleaners or laces through a collider. If you have playdoh/plasticine/blue tac you can push spaghetti in and then thread cheerios or tube pasta onto the spaghetti. Making pasta/bead/button necklaces with string is always a popular activity. You can even make spaghetti hedgehogs!

Below are some images to give you an idea:

EXTRA CHALLENGE

Do you think you can handle an extra challenge? 

Your challenge is to build a structure or tower using marshmallows (or playdoh) and spaghetti. How high can you get? How strong can you make it? Can you think about what worked well and how you can make it better? Upload your photos onto Dojo, I look forward to seeing what you can create! Good luck, Mrs Webber.