Fine motor skills focus on the small muscles such as the fingers, toes, face, and eyes. When choosing activities to help build up the muscle tone and control in these small muscle groups, you want to focus on a variety of activities that pinch, squeeze, tear, roll, grasp, toss, catch, pound, encourage smiling, eye tracking, opening and closing fingers, coordinating hand and eyes, etc. Animal Rescue will focus on pinching, tearing, grasping, opening and closing fingers, and coordinating hand and eyes.
Materials
- Muffin tray
- Washi tape
- Small toy animals to rescue (We used Riley’s favorite bath toys)
Directions
- Place a small animal in each of the muffin spots.
- Place a piece of Washi tape over each animal to trap them in the muffin tray.
- Put the tray out for your little one to play with. This can be a high chair activity or placed in your child’s play area. I placed the muffin tin on top of Riley’s play mat tower for her to crawl to, pull up, and then rescue the animals.
- Watch as your child figures out how to free each animal. Encourage them to peel the tape off each animal. What do they do when the tape sticks to their hand?
- Don’t forget to encourage and talk about what your child is doing as they rescue their animal friends!
Tip: If peeling the tape back is tricky, try to leave edges of the tape already peeled back for your little one to grab onto. As they get the hang of that, then smooth the tape down to encourage them to challenge themselves.
Riley's experience
Riley loves her bath toys and when she saw them in the muffin tray, her face lit up. She quickly crawled over to her tower and pulled up. She went for the owl first and quickly freed it. The tape often stuck to her fingers though she tried not to let that slow her down in her pursuit to free all her animal friends. She would try to shake the tape off or pound it against the muffin tray with minimal success. I was impressed with how quickly she freed each animal. She didn’t pause to take a break or play with the freed animals. She kept working until the job was done!
Benefits
- Fine motor skills: Your child is working on pinching and grasping the tape, tearing the tape off the muffin tray and animal, and opening and closing their fingers as they pinch/grasp the tape, remove it, and grab the animal.
- Hand-eye coordination: Your child is working on their hand eye coordination as they pick and peel the tape off each animal.
- Problem solving skills: Your child has to figure out how to free the animals and free their fingers from the tape.
- Language development: Your child is learning contextual vocabulary as they play. They may hear words such as tear, pinch, save, rescue, grab, sticky, tape, etc.
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