Handprints Activities
Here are some fun ideas to do with children to work on hand skills or skills that affect them. The activities have been broken up according to the skills they work on. Under each skill, they have been further broken into 3 age categories. The activities use objects that can be found in most homes. They also take very little or no set up!
Bilateral coordination: the ability to use both hands together in a
coordinated manner.
6 Months to 1 ½ Years:
Teach your child to throw a beach ball up into the air.
1 ½ Years to 3 Years:
Provide crackers in a self sealing bag your child to retrieve crackers out of.
3 Years to 5 Years
Have your child spread soft cheese on a cracker for snack time
using a dull spreading knife.
Eye hand coordination: the ability of the brain to coordinate information
from the eyes with the movements of the hand.
Dangle a bright rattle for your child to grab.
Draw simple pictures of people and animals and let your child draw the
lines for the arms and legs. Bugs are great for this as they have many legs.
Draw simple mazes for your child to maneuver through with a pencil.
Handedness: the use of one hand more than the other in one-handed or
two-handed skilled activities.
Sing ‘The Hokey Pokey” with your child using hand and body movements.
Poke small holes on a paper plate to make a design for your child to lace
through with yarn.
Fine motor skills: the use of small muscles in our hands for more skilled,
precise, and smaller movements.
Have your child cut different shapes out to make a picture for the front
of a card to give to a friend.
Encourage your child to stay in the lines while coloring small features of
a
picture such as eyes, mouth, shoes etc.
Forearm pronation and supination: the ability to move the forearm back and
forth between the positions of palm facing down and palm facing up.
Put stickers on the palm of your child’s hands for them to remove.
Using a pump bottle, have your child pump lotion into his hands.
Play a game of dice with your child to see who gets the higher number.
Shake the dice with hands cupped, one hand on top and the other on
bottom.
Haptic sense: the ability to gather information about or identify objects
through touch only when manipulating them with the hands.
Read ‘touch and feel’ or other textured books to your child.
Make bath time fun with shaving cream on the wall. Make simple designs
like lines and circles for your child to imitate.
Put simple objects that your child is familiar with in a bag and ask your
child to identify them without looking.
In-hand manipulation: the ability of the fingers and palm to turn, twist, and
move an object in the hand.
Provide dress up clothes with 1’ buttons for your child to practice
buttoning and unbuttoning. Vests are the best, as children’s hands don’t
get tangled in sleeves.
Teach your child to spin quarters on a table.
Isolated finger movements: the ability to move the fingers separately of each
other, whether being used individually or in combination of each other.
Sing “This Little Light of Mine” with your child using hand movements
Read Eric Carle’s “The Hungry Caterpillar” and let your child poke at the
holes.
Sing “Where is Thumbkin” with your child using hand movements.
Put a piece of tape on a table and see who, you or your child can flick the
most pennies over line.
Motor planning: the ability of a child to interact with things in the world
around them in a purposeful way based on the information perceived through the
senses. This means having the idea of what to with something, plan how to do it
and then carry out the plan.
Have your child imitate simple movements such as patting the head,
wiggling fingers, open and closing hands, etc.
Have your child make buildings using small cardboard boxes taped shut,
paper cups, and paper towel or toilet paper dowels
Play “Simon Says” with your child using arm and hand movements.
Power grasp:
the use of force or power on an object with the fingers and
thumbs acting against the palm of the hand when grasping that object.
Play with sponges in the tub. Have your child wring them out to make
‘rain.’
Let your child put the canned food in the cupboard after grocery
shopping.
Precision grasp: the ability to use the pads of one’s thumb, index and
sometimes middle finger to pick up or manipulate an object, with slight bending
of the fingers.
Have your child remove puzzle pieces with small pegs from a form board.
Cut up food, like bananas and meat sticks, for your child to eat with the
fingers.
Have your child put stickers on a calendar each day.
Help your child connect paper clips (silver, gold, red and blue) to make a
necklace.
Reach:
the ability to extend the arm to obtain, release or hold an object.
Blow bubbles for your child to pop.
Play simple games of throw and catch with your child using a beach ball.
Have your child toss a scarf up into the air to catch.
Release:
the letting go of an object by the hand.
Help your child put blocks in a shape sorter without or with the lid.
Make “tall” buildings with your child by stacking blocks.
See how many clothespins your child can drop into an empty milk cartoon
while
standing.
Separation of two sides of the hand: the use of the thumb, index and middle
fingers to push, poke, turn or grasp objects while the pinky side of the hand is
supported in the palm of the hand.
While crawling on hands and knees, have your child hold a small toy to
give to a sibling.
Put fish crackers in an ice tray for your child to remove.
Turn on some music with a beat and teach your child to snap fingers.
Shoulder strength and stability:
the ability of the muscles in the shoulders
to activate when using the arms.
Give your child a small golf ball to chase around on a hard floor.
Place large fluffy pillows for your child to crawl on hands and knees over.
Let your child push around a watermelon or pumpkin in the back yard.
Have your child help bring in the milk jugs after grocery shopping.
Trunk stability: the stability in the body’s trunk to maintain an upright
posture, shift weight in all directions and rotate the trunk to the left and the
right.
Bounce your child on your lap slightly moving your knees back and forth.
Place large fluffy pillows on the floor for your child to walk over.
Help your child walk on curbs in safe area.
Visual Perception: the ability to perceive and understand information
received from the eyes.
Label and describe to your child things in the environment throughout the
day. Use simple words.
Give your child two small objects that are the same and one small object
that is different. Ask your child to identify the one that is different. The
junk drawer is often a good source of objects.
Cover up half of an object in a picture book and let your child guess what
the object is.
