Gross and Fine motor skills

This week the babies enjoyed a variety of different messy play activities that encouraged the development of our fine motor skills. The Development matters curriculum states “Fine motor control and precision helps with hand-eye co-ordination which is later linked to early literacy” and “Gross motor skills provide the foundation for developing healthy bodies and social and emotional well-being.” Through these activities we had a variety of learning opportunities while also having lots of fun getting messy.

For our first activity we explored flour and making marks and shapes in it. We worked on our fine motor skills by pinching, patting and grabbing the flour. We then added play people to the flour that we used to make marks by using them like stampers to create lovely circle shapes.  

For our next activity we added water to cornflour to make a gloopy texture. We used our hands and fingers to make shapes in the mixture and watch them disappear. We also really enjoyed pinching the mixture and watching it drip from our fingers.

Our final activity we all took part in a large floor painting activity. We used summer stampers to create beautiful marks and pictures on the paper. We also used our hands and fingers to make prints and marks on the paper watching all of the colours mix together and enjoying our lovely creation.