Funky fingers and finger gym activities

If you would like to know more about the benefits of and introducing finger gym or funky fingers to your preschool children then head over to our part 1 article here.

For those of you who have already read part 1 and are now looking for some great activities to set up of your own here are some top tips and activity ideas…

• Interest – Always were possible try to incorporate the children’s interests. Currently it is coming up to Halloween therefore the children may be talking about this and you could set up one of the following finger gym activities

1. Using tweezers to pick googly eyes out of slime
2. Balancing ping pong eyeballs on top of gold tees
3. Retrieving the spiders with tweezers from the bottom of basket which has been threaded with wool spider webs

• Extend learning – just because funky fingers and finger gym is mostly about developing fine motors skills this does not mean you cant extend learning in to other areas such as mathematics. Here are some top activities which promote more than just fine motor skills

1. Attached the correct amount of paper clips to the bottom of number cards
2. Using tweezers sort the pom poms into the correct coloured containers
3. Attach the correct number of pegs to a number card or shape
4. Roll the dice and use chop sticks to transfer the correct number of cotton wool balls from one area to another

• Natural Resources – Often trying to find time to create resources or having the funds to by resources can be difficult so where possible make the most of natural resources. Activities such as

1. Using small sieves to transfer conkers
2. Thread leaves using sticks and string
3. Sort seeds or pick seeds out of sunflower heads
4. Make transient art patterns out of pebbles

Finger gym and funky finger activities are often based around the following motions so bare this in mind when trying to create inspiring finger gym activities…

• Threading
• Pinching
• Poking
• Squeezing
• Picking
• Posting
• Pulling

For more great ideas check out our pinterest board here and add your favourite finger gym and funky finger activities in comments!