G and Will love arts and craft projects. And as it’s hot and sticky out, we stayed inside this morning for this easy ocean craft designed to help them practice several fine motor skills.
Here’s what you need:
- scissors
- glue stick
- blue, brown, and tan construction paper
- ocean stickers
Fine Motor Skill: Cutting with Scissors
First, the kids practiced their scissor skills by cutting wavy lines across the length of the tan paper to create the ocean floor. You can let them do this free handed or draw the line and have them follow it. Then they used the brown paper to cut out rocks (roughly rounded shapes).
Fine Motor Skill: Precision Application
Next it was time to work with the glue stick to glue the ocean floor and rocks to the blue paper. G is getting good at outlining her piece with the glue, while William still smushes glue everywhere. Getting the glue to go where they want it to helps them to learn to control their hands, which will help as they get ready to learn to write.
Fine Motor Skill: Pincer Grip Practice
Once the pieces were in place we started stickering. My mom brought over some fabulous foam ocean stickers, which is what we used here. Stickers are a great opportunity for kids to practice their pincer grip. Foam stickers are my favorite for this because the child can hold the sticker and carefully peel the back off.
Pro-tip: have a little bowl in place to hold the sticker backs, otherwise they all end up on the floor.
The nice thing about this type of craft, is that it can be modified to suit what you have. Don’t have any ocean stickers but you’ve got a ton of cars and trucks? Great, you can have the kids cut out a road and some simple house shapes. No trucks, but a ton of aniamals? Perfect, make a a farm or a forest scene. The fine motor skills remain the same, but the possibilities are endless.