Winter Fine Motor Centers for Kindergarten
In addition to literacy and math practice, itโs essential that the kindergarten curriculum includes plenty of opportunities for fine motor development. Hand strength and coordination are important for young students as they participate in academic and self-care tasks during the school day. However, with so many things to work on during the school day, it might feel difficult to find time for additional fine motor activities! In this post, Iโm going to share some fun Winter Fine Motor Centers that help build hand strength for little hands as they practice literacy and math skills.
Benefits of Kindergarten Fine Motor Centers
There are many benefits of incorporating fine motor centers into your kindergarten routine. Here are a few of my favorites:
1. Highly Engaging – Fine motor activities are hands-on and highly engaging for young students. As they use a variety of fine motor tools, they will have so much fun that they wonโt even realize their small muscles are hard at work! These engaging activities are perfect for the weeks leading up to the winter holidays and getting back into the routine after winter break.
2. Small Groups – Since fine motor centers are perfect for small groups, you can customize them to best meet the needs of your students! The small group setting also means that you can more easily monitor your students for progress and safety. This is especially important when students are using fine motor tools like scissors!
3. Multi-Purpose – We all know that time is of the essence in kindergarten! Thatโs why itโs ideal to be able to incorporate fine motor practice into other academic activities. This is where fine motor centers shine! Your students can practice a variety of literacy and math skills as they improve their hand-eye coordination and hand strength.
7 Winter Fine Motor Centers for Kindergarten
If youโre ready to add some fine motor practice to your classroom, check out these seasonal low prep centers. Your little learners will love these winter math and literacy activities with a fine motor twist!
1. Snowman Buttons
The snowman is missing his buttons in this center! Your students can practice counting and number identification as they add the correct number of buttons to each snowman. This activity comes in two sizes to help you best meet the needs of your students. There are smaller snowman task cards that allow you to use smaller manipulatives for the buttons, like beans. This is perfect for tweezer practice!
The other version comes with larger fine motor mats. Your students will switch out the hat number cards to determine how many buttons they need to add to the snowman. This is perfect for students who would benefit from picking up and placing slightly larger objects, such as buttons or mini erasers.
2. Hot Cocoa Spin and Add
The winter months are perfect for hot cocoa! Your students will love this spin and add activity with a fine motor twist. Each mug of cocoa already has some marshmallows and your students will add more! After using the spinner on the penguin card, students will add that number of white pom poms or cotton balls. Then they will find the sum and complete the number sentence!
3. Snowman Beading
Snowman fine motor activities are a fun addition to your winter lesson plans! Your students will love creating arms for their snowmen with this beading activity!ย Beading is a great way to help students practice pincer grasp and in-hand manipulation skills as they pick up and adjust each bead to place it on the pipe cleaner.
There are many ways that you can adjust the activity for your students. Students can roll just one or two dice and add the number of beads to either of the pipe cleaner arms. Students could also roll one die for each arm and see which one fills up first! This activity could also be used as a partner activity, with students taking turns to see who can fill up their snowman arms first.
4. Decorate the Tree
Your students will love decorating Christmas trees as they practice number recognition and counting! Students can use colored pom poms, rolled balls of play dough, or even snap cubes to add the correct number and color of ornaments to each tree task card. You can adjust the difficulty of this activity by choosing objects of different sizes or adding tweezers.
5. Ornament Hole Punch
Thereโs something about a hole punch that is extra fun for young learners! Punching holes in paper requires quite a bit of hand strength, but students barely notice because theyโre having so much fun. Your students will love punching holes on each ornament of these Christmas tree task cards.
6. Geoboard Numbers
In addition to building hand strength and coordination, students can practice number identification and counting with these geoboard task cards! Your students will also use their visual-spatial skills to recreate on their geoboards what they see on each card. Each task card also includes space for students to trace each number for even more fine motor practice!
7. Block Word Building
Finally, your students can use their fine motor skills to build sight words and CVC words using blocks. This engaging task will help students practice identifying lowercase letters as they build each word. Students will improve their hand strength as they add, remove, and adjust the blocks on the building plate. This is another great activity to use those visual-spatial skills!
Printable Winter Fine Motor Centers
Each winter-themed activity pictured above (and more!) can be found in a printable bundle of fine motor centers. Your students can improve their hand-eye coordination, scissor skills, and more with these engaging seasonal centers that will last you the entire school year.
Your students will have a great time with these hands-on centers during the winter months and beyond! If youโd like to take a closer look at everything included in this bundle of fine motor activities for kindergarten, just click below to find it in my shop.
Fine Motor Activities Kindergarten Task Cards Boxes
Save These Winter Fine Motor Activities
If youโd like to come back to these fine motor activities for kindergarten students, be sure to save this post!ย You can add the pin below to your favorite teaching board on Pinterest.ย This will help you quickly find this post whenever youโre looking for some fine motor winter activities to use in your classroom.
