Fine Motor Toys for Improved Handwriting and Pencil Grip

This article provides fine motor toys to help your child develop their fine motor skills for handwriting and pencil grip. Affiliate links are provided for your convenience. Integrated Learning Strategies (ILS) is a learning and academic center. As a reminder, ILS is not a health care provider and none of our materials or services provide a diagnosis or treatment of a specific condition or learning challenge you may see in your child or student. If you seek a diagnosis or treatment for your child or student, please contact a trained professional who can provide an evaluation of the child.

There are many children with or without learning challenges who struggle with fine motor development. Fine motor development includes pencil grip, handwriting, and strength in the hands, wrists and fingers. Because our kids use their fine motor skills every day, it’s important to help them develop these important skills so they can perform their daily tasks. Kids use their fine motor skills to…

• Tie their shoes
• Fasten their buttons
• Cut with scissors
• Write with pencils

Development during the Early Years

Many parents ask what tools and resources can help develop their child’s fine motor skills when they are younger. There are many fine motor activities and toys available for kids. We recommend toys that help with all areas of fine motor development. When purchasing toys for fine motor development, choose items that help the following:

• Sequencing for math skills
• Letter recognition
• Hand dominance
• Letter directionality
• Hand-eye coordination
• Visual planning
• Proprioception 

Because many of these toys encourage your child to use their hands, fingers and wrists to manipulate the objects, they provide more opportunities for your child to learn. In addition, fine motor toys and activities help your child’s brain develop and can also improve their visual skills and attention and focus.

In Kenneth Lane’s book Developing Ocular Motor and Visual Perceptual Skills,  he says, “A cause of deficiencies in children’s handwriting may be the inadequate control of the various muscles involved in movement execution. Handwriting is carried out with a variety of coordinated movements, and the child must be able to control spatial, temporal, and force requirements of the task.”

Fine Motor Toys

Here are a few recommendations for toys that can improve fine motor skills. For additional help with handwriting and fine motor development, check out our Rewiring the Brain handbooks here.

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Integrated Learning Strategies is a Utah-based center dedicated to helping mainstream children and children with learning challenges achieve academic success. Our services provide kids with non-traditional tutoring programs within the Davis County, Kaysville, Layton, Syracuse, Farmington, and Centerville areas. Areas to find Integrated Learning Strategies include: Reading tutors in Kaysville, Math tutors in Kaysville, Common Core Tutors in Kaysville, Tutors in Utah, Utah Tutoring Programs