Last Updated on June 30, 2023 by Editorial Team
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Children are born with limited fine motor skills. Their bones and joints attain the required strength with time, and accordingly, their ability to grasp things or maneuver them increases. In cases where there is little coordination between the brain function and muscular strength, there is a need to give added support for building fine motor skills. This much-needed support is available in the form of board games and activities for fine motor skills, that can help children do things of daily importance with ease.
Why fine motor skills are important?
It is because of the fine motor skills that children can do simple actions like holding a spoon or pencil, tying lace of shoes, buttoning of the shirts, and others. People born with poor fine motor skills continue to carry the inability to do these certain jobs if their issues are not addressed at the very early stage. This is the reason, the early education curriculum comprises some activities that allow kids to enhance their fine motor skills with regular practice.
Let’s take a look at some engaging board games for building fine motor skills in children that can help improve grip, the capability to arrange things logically, and also get additional benefits like shape and color recognition.
7 Innovative board games for fine motor skills
1. Squirrel Game for Toddlers – Educational Game
Squirrel game is designed to accomplish multiple purposes keeping the fine motor skills at the forefront of planning. This board game contains a squirrel squeezer using which kids pick the unicorn and place it on the log at the appropriate slot. There are multiple acorns in different styles provided.
Children spin the spinner and pick the acorn pointed by the spinner. This gameplay allows building shape matching and color matching skills apart from enhancing fine motor skills. The spinner and squeezer provide the requisite workout needed for wrist and finger joints.
2. Skoolzy Peg Board Set
A happening board game that offers loads of learning benefits to young children. Ideal for the children 1 to 3 years of age, this game for building fine motor skills requires the kids to fix pegs on the pegboard.
There is a dice provided with colorful sides. Players recognize the colors and pick the corresponding pegs and fix them on the board with hands. When not fixing on board, the children can do threading activity too as a thread is provided to pass it through the hole. Hand-eye coordination, better visual perception skills, and enhanced muscle coordination come better to kids by playing this game regularly.
3. Coogan Wooden Magnetic Fishing Game
Bring fishing activity to your board with this wooden magnetic fishing game. The fish-shaped props are to be fit into the wooden board’s slots. The catch is that you have to match the alphabet on the fish with that given in the slot to make a correct placing.
So, this board game for fine motor skills enhances hand and eye coordination and grasping capacity as well. Further, they can enhance visual closure capability while putting the fish in slots of limited size. Initial support is provided by the magnetic end of the picker. With throwing speed challenges, kids can gain confidence in grasping things.
4. Schoolzy Nuts and Bolts Fine Motor Skills Toys
Fine motor skills development gives way to various other skills such as spatial reasoning skills, visual perception development, and others.
This nut and bolt set is designed taking into account all the requirements of a child trying to acquire these basic skills. When they try to screw the bolt while matching their shape, they are trying to achieve better comfort with shapes and other physical characteristics of the objects.
A hands-on activity suitable for keeping a child engaged, it offers a better pretext for inculcating learning of colors, shapes, orientation, motor skills, etc.
5. Melissa And Doug Lace and Trace Activity Set
Lacing is one of the very yielding activities that help build fine motor skills in growing children. In fact, it is one of the toughest things to do for any child because of the coordination required between hand and eye movement.
This wooden board game is designed in animal shapes to entice children into taking up the challenge of lacing activity. With regular practice, kids experience better flexibility in the use of muscles. Moreover, the laces are color-coordinated with the wooden panels to help children overcome color recognition difficulties.
6. Toddler Busy Board – learn to dress
How about teaching the act of dressing up to children by indulging them in a play activity? This board game for fine motor skills development is designed to help the kids become well-conversant with the daily activities they would come across in real life.
It is of great help to kids when they learn to dress up all by themselves, something that they may avoid doing due to poor fine motor skills. So, address the issue of motor skills head-on with this board game that children can practice upon to learn how to tie a shoelace, or a wristwatch strap, or zip up the pants.
This board game for fine motor skills is simple yet very effective in promoting in children the eye-hand coordination development, spatial intelligence development, and ultimately, in building confidence in doing things on their own.
7. Educational Building Blocks Construction Game
Bring more character to the art of teaching fine motor skills with this educational construction set, where kids get to fiddle with the tools they see in the hands of their parents mostly. Since kids love to imitate the elder ones, they are more drawn towards the idea of using a toolset comprising of a drill machine, screw-tightener, bolt-hastener, and others.
The challenges given in the form of shapes and patterns to build on the board, the kids get to experiment with various ideas while doing the core construction activity. Color identification as well as coordination, and the advanced skills like problem-solving, logical reasoning, imagination use, etc. in kids are the benefits that you can achieve from encouraging kids to try their hands on this game.
8. Ibwaae Wooden Peg Board Beads Game
The last board game on our list is the rainbow-inspired beads game. The pack includes 102 pom poms of different colors constituting a rainbow, a wooden peg board with depressions, and two bamboo tongs. As kids try their hands on this fun yet challenging game, they polish their fine motor skills while they pick one pom pom at a time, hold the grip with the tong, and put it in the respective depression on the peg board.
Besides supporting the development of fine motor skills, this beautifully-made game also promotes color matching, sorting, hand eye coordination and more! The game is recommended for kids up to 6 years old. Preschoolers will specifically enjoy playing with this toy for hours on end because at this age, they are usually more fond of activities that are colorful, vibrant, and involve repetitive actions.
Wrapping up,
Fine motor skills are not something that can be built by using books. One has to create the conditions conducive environment for the children to become physically and mentally active so that they get to learn intelligent use of their mind, vision as well as body muscles. These board games for fine motor skills develop cognition into the child’s activity learning process and can make them aware of their potential that remains hidden for longer when not stimulated.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,