Fourth of July Fine Motor Skills

Posted by Lynn Moore Jun 30, 2008

Fine motor skills are also used in handwriting, fastening buttons and snaps, and cutting with scissors. If this sounds like your child, try this festive placemat craft. You will need large sheets of red construction paper and colored sticker dots or stars (white and blue).

Show your child how to peel the stickers off of the backing and place them on the edge of the construction. Alternate the white and blue ones. If your child has difficulty getting ahold of the stickers, you may want to pull one edge up slightly so she can better get ahold of it.

These patterned placemats are more than holiday decorations that build fine motor skills. Creating a pattern is also the kind of skill that comes into play when writing words that follow a spelling pattern: den, hen, men, pen, ten.

Are you looking for other Fourth of July fun ways to practice patterns?

• Use colored candies to place in a patterned row: white-blue-white-blue.
• Arrange the paper plates around the table: red-blue-red-blue. Do the same thing with the cups or napkins.
• Make play dough stars out of alternating colors.
• Try pattern movements: jump like the fireworks, go into a ball like a watermelon, repeat the sequence.

The Fourth of July is supposed to be a celebration. . . So what is stopping you?