9 favorite fine motor activities for 22 months

Every time your toddler picks up a tiny object or makes a small block tower, their brain gets a little better at coordinating the small muscles of their hands and fingers. This improved dexterity and fine motor control lead to independence in practical tasks, like setting the table or getting dressed 🙂

As with all skills, fine motor abilities progress differently in each child. Now or soon, your toddler may enjoy these fine motor activity ideas from Rachel Rudman, a pediatric occupational therapist in Long Island, N.Y.

Transferring a tiny object into a small opening

Your toddler has been using their index finger and thumb to “pinch” an object—known as the pincer grasp—for a while. Now, they’re learning how to hold and precisely drop those objects into a small container. Think about how you drop a pill into a medicine bottle—this is the type of skill your toddler is working toward.

Your toddler may enjoy practicing this skill by:

• Dropping small pieces of O-shaped cereal into the small opening of an empty milk or juice carton. Once they drop in the cereal, you can help them secure the lid so they can shake the shaker they made. 
• Placing the thin dowel from the Wooden Posting Stand into its hole.

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The Companion Play Kit (Months 22-24)

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Imitating vertical scribbles

If you draw a vertical line on a piece of paper, your toddler will probably try to imitate it. Remember, these scribbles will likely not look like straight lines at first.

Your toddler may enjoy practicing this skill by:

• Using a variety of materials. They might enjoy making circles or lines using foam soap, finger paints, a pan of sand or flour, or a stick in soft soil. 
• Drawing “grass.” Use a broken green crayon or foam soap with green food coloring to make vertical lines resembling grass. 

Stringing large beads

Stringing beads is a classic Montessori activity that helps your toddler build bilateral coordination (using two hands together) and strengthen their finger muscles. All these skills are needed eventually for handwriting, using buttons, and tying shoelaces. 

Your toddler may enjoy practicing this skill by:

• Threading the rings from the Wooden Stack & Slot on a pipe cleaner or a dowel planted into play dough.
• Using the stringing tool and blocks from The Block Set to string together the blocks with holes.
• Stringing the thicker, round beads from the Threadable Bead Kit onto the string. 

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The Adventurer Play Kit (Months 16-18)

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The Block Set

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Stacking blocks and cups

Stacking blocks requires fine motor precision, hand-eye coordination, and planning skills. At 22 months, your toddler may be able to stack six blocks upright in a tower. As they learn to stack more and more blocks, they develop hand-eye coordination and motor control, while also learning about physics and other STEM concepts.

Your toddler may enjoy practicing this skill by:

• Stacking blocks into a tower and seeing how many they can stack before it falls. Your toddler may find knocking the tower over just as much fun as building it 🙂
• Nesting the six Nesting Stacking Dripdrop Cups. Nesting materials help your child refine their dexterity, hand-eye coordination, problem-solving skills, and visual discrimination.

What’s next?

As they turn 2 and in the months following, your child may develop these fine motor skills:

• Screwing and unscrewing jars and lids.
• Snipping with scissors. Picking up objects with the Transfer Tweezers lets your child practice the opening and closing motion they’ll use to cut. 
• Imitating horizontal scribbles. Once they’ve learned to make vertical strokes, your child may enjoy using a variety of materials to make a stroke “across,” or from left to right.

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