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Busy Hands is a selection of experiences across all age groups, focused on supporting children with their fine motor skills. Fine motor skills are the use of the small muscles within your hands, fingers and wrists. Below you will find a selection of experiences suitable for children aged 0-2.

Card drop

Support your baby with their pincer grip as they take part in this posting experience.

Safety first

Supervise your baby as they take part in this experience.

What to do

Prior to this experience, cut a large hole in the top of a cardboard box or within the lid of a Tupperware container, ensuring it is wide enough for a card to be posted through.

Role model to your baby how you can pick up a card and post this through the hole.

Encourage your baby to copy your actions as they grasp and pick up a card and try to post this into the hole.

More Information

Providing opportunities for your baby to develop and practice their fine motor skills, will contribute to supporting them later in life with self-care routines, such as dressing and feeding themselves.

Bottle lids

Support your baby's finger strength and movements as they explore with tape and bottle lids.

Safety First

Ensure this experience is supervised and prevent your baby placing bottle lids into their mouth. Use large bottle lids where possible. Ensure bottle lids are clean before use. As each strip of tape is pulled off ensure this is disposed of.

What to do

Prior to the experience, loosely tape a range of bottle lids to the tray of your baby's highchair or you could use a tray on the floor. To tape the bottle lids, place the bottle lids onto the tray and stick a piece of masking tape over the top of each lid, securing both ends of the tape to the surface of the tray.

Invite your baby to sit in the highchair or next to the tray on the floor. Role model to your baby how you can use your fingers to peel, scratch and pick off the tape, freeing the bottle lid.

Invite your baby to then have a go at copying your actions to see if they can remove the tape and bottle lids!

More Information

Developing your baby's finger strength is a building block to developing secure fine motor skills, therefore it is important babies are offered opportunities to develop this skill, which will support them throughout their life.

Tube thread

Support your baby's fine motor skills through this threading experience.

Safety first

Ensure this experience is supervised.

What to do

Prior to the experience, use the scissors to cut the cardboard tubes into halves so you have small cardboard rings.

Role model to your baby how to thread a piece of material through one of the cardboard tubes, by using one hand to thread the material through the tube, whilst using your other hand to grasp the material at the opposite end of the tube and pulling this through.

Invite your baby to have a turn at copying your actions as they practice their threading skills.

More Information

By encouraging your baby to use their hand grasp in this experience, this will support their fine motor skills and help to build up their hand muscle strength.

Bottle lid post

Support your child with their pincer grip as they take part in this posting experience

Safety first

Secure the edges of the hole that you cut with masking tape so it is not sharp. Avoid very small bottle lids that might cause a choking hazard. Clean lids before use

What to do

Before starting, cut a hole in the top of the box or container, big enough for your child to post the bottle lids in. Secure the edges of this opening with masking tape.

Encourage your child to grasp and pick up a bottle lid and see if they can post this into the hole. Repeat until all of the bottle lids have been posted

More information

Encouraging your baby to take part in fine motor experiences will support them in building up their hand, finger and wrist strength, which are fundamental skills needed for writing later in life