You can consider a newborn child as a blank canvass. When they’re brought to the world, they will have zero knowledge about everything; they won’t have any idea how things around them work.
As a parent, it’s your responsibility to mold and develop your children into a well-rounded individual. If you’re looking for ways to achieve this goal in the easiest way possible, rely on finger gym activities. These activities are fun, simple, and cheap.
In its simplest sense, finger gym activities are basically any activity that aims to develop a child’s motor skills. Originally used as an activity to improve a child’s handwriting, finger gym activities now comes in different games and paces. Finger gym activities can be done in a set area all day or during a set time only. These activities can be altered based on the child’s interests and age.
Once done correctly and consistently, finger gym activities can contribute the following benefits to your child’s development:
1. Promotes Your Child’s Fine Motor Skills
As your child ages, they’re expected to do more tasks. During their toddler years, they’re expected to paste things onto paper, button and unbutton, and complete puzzles that have at least five pieces. Introducing finger gym activities to your child’s early years encourages the development of their fine motor skills early.
One of the most common gym finger activities children can do today is thread lacing. For this activity, you just need to print out a shape (probably made from a strong material other than paper) and cut several holes on it. Instruct your children to go through these holes with a string, yarn, or thin ribbon.
This activity can develop your child’s fine motor skills because this will require them to work with their fingers and eyes. Both of these body parts should be synchronized with each other to cover all the holes with yarn and avoid them from pricking their fingers. Regular finger gym activities can improve your children’s dexterity over time.
2. Encourages Communication And Boost Language Skills
Communication is vital in life. It’s through communication that people learn and share knowledge. Communication is also key for people to express their emotions and create healthy relationships with others, as well.
These are just some of the reasons why you should work on encouraging communication and boosting the language skills of your child. When they’re able to communicate properly, it’ll be easy for them to improve the quality of their life in the future. This is something that finger gym activities can help you with.
For a finger gym activity that’s focused on targeting the communication and language skills of your child, let them help in whisking up pancakes. This finger gym activity will encourage communication because they’ll be expected to follow the instructions you gave them and encourage them to ask questions if certain parts of the procedure are unclear to them.
With this simple activity, they’ll learn how important communication is in accomplishing a simple task and how it contributes to relationships.
3. Allows Children To Become More Independent
It’s typical for children to be dependent on their parents. When they’re still young, they’ll depend on their parents for their clothing, food, and personal hygiene. However, as they get older, things will change, and your children will become less dependent on you. Although their independence can be disheartening to some parents, an independent child can also mean a more responsible child.
Because finger gym activities aim to develop your child’s fine motor skills, it won’t be long before they’ll become independent. When their fine motor skills are developed, it’ll be easier for them to button their own coat and tie their shoelaces. As a result, they can now dress up for school on their own.
Fully-developed fine motor skills will also help your child open a box of cereals and pour in the right amount of milk in their bowls. Once they’re able to do all of these things, they can eat on their own without asking help from their parents and adults.
Take note that an independent child can be someone who has a positive self-image and knows how to handle stress and failure in the future.
For your child to enjoy all of the benefits associated with finger gym activities, slowly introduce the idea to them. Depending on their age, you might want to explain why you’re preparing these activities for them.
Engage with your children by playing these activities with them. Once they see that you’re also taking part in gym finger activities, it’ll be easier for them to adjust and eventually love the idea.
Examples of Finger Gym Activities
Try quickly drawing a rainbow on some paper. The child should then draw dots along the lines that match the colors using cotton buds. Maintaining the dots on the line and making sure they are distributed equally while utilizing the proper pincer grip can be challenging. Further difficulty can be added by having the child use a pincer grip to match the colors and place the dot as close to the line as they could.
Put some pom poms in ice cube trays with water and freeze. The children must attempt to push the ice cubes out of the tray, and as they melt, they must pick them up with tweezers and place them in a container. If there aren’t any tweezers accessible, you can use a pair of toy tweezers or a couple of clothes pegs to increase the difficulty. The kids will definitely appreciate the effort of squeezing the pegs, and after they have filled their bowl, they will feel incredibly proud of themselves. The fact that ice melts to form water might also be taught to the kids.
Hanging out the washing
Give the task of pegging the socks to the kids considering they enjoy helping to hang up the laundry. As they had to use their other hand to grip the sock, they may only squeeze the pegs with one hand. With a piece of thread fastened to a couple of chair legs, this might be modified so that kids could wash baby garments or socks in a basin and peg out the laundry.
Try gathering household items that have holes, much like a colander. A basket and some threading beads would also work. Push it through the holes you find using long pasta noodles. The kids would adore this, and you’d be shocked at how focused they are and how many tiny holes they managed to stuff the pasta into.
With your toddler, you can do an array of threading activities. Pictures and a variety of other little and large beads can be threaded. If you don’t want to spend money, you can encourage kids to use wool or shoelaces to thread through the holes you’ve punched in colorful paper. You may sketch an image and then punch holes along the lines if you’re artistic. It’s also fantastic for those finger muscles to have the kids punch their own holes in paper.
Using paper, make a variety of shapes and lines. All shapes—circles, squares, triangles, integers, letters, and zigzags—are functional. After that, instruct the kids to adhere stickers along the lines. Circle stickers in various colors can be used to create patterns. Also, you may choose to use some of the many leftover magazine stickers that functioned just as well. They all like it, and it will keep them occupied for a long time, so it’s a terrific activity.
The kids are quite delighted whenever the postman delivers something because there might be bubble wrap inside! Hence, you must cut it into squares so that they each have the equal number of bubbles to bust, encourage them to use their thumb and fingers to pop the bubbles, and then allow them to run wild. Great fun!
The ability to do tasks like screwing or unscrewing lids, opening lunchboxes, putting straws in milk, tying shoelaces or buttons, zipping up coats, putting letters into book bags, changing into and out of P.E. kits and putting them away, and using the restroom are just a few of the skills children need to function independently at school. I hope you find these suggestions to help your children develop useful.