The Easiest Fine Motor Activities for 18-24 Months
Looking for easy fine motor activities that don’t take a ton of set up or a bunch of new toys you have to buy? We’ve got the easiest activity ideas that you can do with items you already have at home!
If you’ve been on social media lately, you’re probably overwhelmed with the elaborate activities for babies and toddlers. But the truth is an easy activity can be just as beneficial. Fine motor development for your babies and toddlers doesn’t have to be so much work.
What are Fine Motor Skills for 18-24 Months?
It can also be stressful to keep track of all the goals and milestones your child is supposed to be meeting. Fine motor development is just one more thing you have to keep track of for them. So, (remembering every child develops at different rates) we made this quick guide for you:
12-18 Months
- Begin to complete puzzles
- Help take off my socks or hat
- Hold my own bottle
- Bring toys or small items in from another room
18-24 Months
- Help clean up toys
- Assemble four blocks or nesting cups
- String large beads
- Build a tower using six blocks
You can see the entire guide to fine motor goals for early childhood here. And all this information and more can be found at the Collaboration for Early Childhood. This is all for informational purposes and not medical advice.
Fine Motor vs. Gross Motor Skills
There’s also a lot of talk about gross motor skills in child development (yet another thing to work on). And they’re both important for physical development. So, in case it’s still confusing, we have an easy way to remember the difference.
Fine motor skills use smaller muscles usually of the wrist, hand, and fingers to build control and hand-eye coordination. These activities usually involve small objects such as picking up small snacks, holding a pencil in the pincer grasp, and transferring little objects to a new container.
Gross motor skills use large muscles or whole body movements to build strength, coordination, and balance. Some easy examples of gross motor activities include dancing, running, climbing, and jumping. We have a whole list of fun ideas here and here if you need it.
The Easiest Fine Motor Activities for Children around 18 Months of Age
We’re here to tell you that you don’t need to stress about getting enough activities in with your child. Tons of the things that children do everyday help with fine motor skill development. You can just add in one or two of these activities to help!
1. Stacking
Stacking any kind of object is a great way to build fine motor control! If you have blocks or stacking cups, those work great. But you can also use any regular old household item you have on hand thats easy to stack.
The other day my granddaughter was stacking Tupperware containers on the kitchen floor while I cooked dinner. Young children truly love playing with household items that aren’t “supposed to” be toys. If it keeps their attention, let them stack it!
2. Snacks
One of the fun ways to motivate little fingers is with food that they like! Small snacks that require children to pick them up with a few fingers are an excellent way to build those small muscles. We even have a fun snacking activity using a muffin tin and sticky notes for extra fine motor control.
3. Pretend Play
This is one activity that your child is probably already starting into, but you can encourage play with any kind of pretend or open-ended toys. Let them play at their own pace, but if you start and show them examples, they’re much more likely to play along.
Playing with baby dolls, little animals or figurines, and even play food are all easy ways to build fine motor skills. Don’t overthink this one, just let them play. Any toy that requires them to use the small hand muscles is awesome!
4. Play Dough
This is one of our absolute favorite activities with little kids because they love it so much and it’s so beneficial for all kinds of development. This is a great fine motor activity and a fantastic sensory activity!
As they use play dough, children have to use the small muscles of their hands and fingers to manipulate the dough. Let your child squish, squeeze and mold the play dough to their heart’s content. Even if it looks like they’re not doing a whole lot, it’s still great for their development of fine motor skills.
As your child approaches 18 months, you can slowly start introducing play dough. They may still try to put it in their mouths (totally normal!), so stay close by. We have an entire guide to starting and using play dough here.
5. Simple Sensory Bins
Leading up to 18 months is also when I like to introduce sensory bins. You may feel stressed out by that because of the potential mess, but remember to keep it simple! We have a whole guide to starting sensory bins here.
For children this young, they’ll still need a lot of guidance. There’s so many different ways you can start depending on what you’re comfortable with, but I recommend starting with a water base and just a few tools. You can use a water table or even just start at bath time!
All your child needs for the fine motor skills development are tools to scoop, mix, and pour like cups, bowls, spoons, and whisks. Then, you start introducing different textures for more sensory play. Any kind of messy play is great for development.
6. Puzzles
Now is the time to start puzzles with your child, too! Manipulating any type of puzzle pieces is a great activity to help develop the hand-eye coordination and control in little hands. Here’s a list of great puzzles or check your local library for puzzles if you don’t want to buy your own.
7. Stringing Large Beads
This is another fun activity that we found at the local library! One way to make stringing beads easier for young children is to use pipe cleaners instead of string. This makes it much easier when they’re starting out.
8. Coloring or Painting
Any kind of art activity that requires using your hands or fingers is a fun way to build strong fine motor skills! Use whatever you have available-crayons, markers, or paint. You can find all of these at the dollar store in you need to.
The best way to start these types of activities is to do the activity with your child the first few times. Then, continue with what they’re most interested in.
If you want to add some fun to the painting, try these favorites:
9. Transferring
Don’t overthink this one either, it’s really that simple. Have your child transfer small objects from one container to another. This could even be putting toys back into a toy box.
Try different materials and containers to see what your child is interested in. My grandchildren love putting those little pom poms into different bowls or bottles.
10. Basic Hygiene Tasks
Including your child in their daily hygiene tasks is another super simple way to build fine motor skills. Let them help brush their teeth, put their socks on, and pull wipes out of the container. These all sound incredibly simple, but they’re still working on those small muscles!
Focus on Those Small Muscles
Remember, you don’t need any fancy tools or activities to build strong fine motor skills. You just need activities that use those small muscles! And you’re probably already doing activities like these without even thinking too much about it, so give yourself some credit.
My best piece of advice is to try a few of these activities with your child, and stick with just one or two they’re most interested in. Don’t try to overwhelm yourself by keeping up with all of them.
