Many of your child’s daily activities—like getting dressed, eating, and writing—require control of small muscles in the hands.

We call these skills fine motor skills.

Your child can do more things for himself when he has opportunities to practice these skills.

There are lots of activities that can increase muscle strength and coordination, preparing children for more advanced skills, from writing with a pencil, using a computer mouse, or playing a musical instrument.

For this activity, we used our fine motor skills to create these fun Heart Trees!

Using beads and their fingers, students were encouraged to slide the beads onto their trees.

This also fostered hand-eye coordination.