10 Rubber Band Activities to Boost Fine Motor Skills
We often get asked about how to help kids improve their fine motor skills, especially before they start school. Some children struggle with holding a pencil or don't have an interest in colouring or drawing. This can worry parents who think their kids will have a hard time learning to write. But there are plenty of other ways to strengthen those little hands so that when the time is right, they'll be able to hold a pencil with ease. Instead of forcing them to do it before school starts, why not try some fun alternatives?
Our own kids tested out these activities at home, and both our 5-year-old and 7-year-old had a great time. We didn't realize how tiring these exercises were for their hands until they told us they felt tired afterwards! These 10 ideas use rubber bands to improve fine motor and pre-writing skills. They're an excellent way for kids to develop their hand-eye coordination, finger strength, dexterity, and the foundational skills they need for writing, all while having fun and being interactive.
For this activity, we took a piece of cardboard cut from an old box and used a hot glue gun to attach 12 bottle tops onto it. We chose bottle tops from pouches to make it easy for the rubber bands to stay in place. If you don't have pouch tops, regular bottle tops should work just fine.
Then, we handed the kids some rubber bands and asked them to stretch them across the bottle tops. We let them decide how they wanted to do it and encouraged them to try different ways of using the board. As you can see from the photo, this activity mainly works on a pincer grip.
This activity is super low prep! Using a paper towel tube and rubber bands.
We asked the kids to place the rubber bands on the cardboard tube and roll them down to the other end. Their varied approaches caught our attention - from using both hands while balancing the tube on the table to using just one hand with the rubber band stretched over all fingers. The activity demanded impressive coordination! Once the rubber band was on, it was rolled down to the end, exercising those fingers even more!
We used the smaller rubber bands which can also be called loom bands for this activity. We set this up using a glass bowl and some chopsticks for our fishing rods. Any sticks would work just fine.
The idea is to get the rubber bands onto the end of the stick and place them on the table or in another bowl.
You can make up any rules you like for this and turn it into a game if it motivates your kids! This game is great for hand-eye coordination.
It looks simple in the photo, but it was actually a challenge. Our 5 year old couldn’t quite get the twisting motion but our 7 year old could. Give it a go though because each child’s strengths are unique and they may surprise you!
Make piles of popsicle sticks and ask the kids to wrap a rubber band around each to make a secured bunch. This takes a bit of coordination to do and it is an excellent way to develop hand dexterity.
This is purely an exercise for the hands and fingers rather than an activity.
Start by wrapping a rubber band around the child’s thumb once, then stretch it over to the index finger and again wrap it around once to stop it slipping off. Ask the child to stretch their thumb and index finger apart and retract 5 to 10 times. Repeat this for all fingers and then swap hands.
Then place the rubber band around all the fingers and ask the child to again stretch and retract all the fingers 5 to 10 times.
This was a surprising favourite activity in our house. You will need some wooden blocks - we used our Jenga blocks.
Start off with 4 or 5 blocks standing up and ask the child to stretch the rubber band across and over the blocks. It is ok to use two hands for this activity because you can increase the challenge as needed by adding more blocks.
Challenge the child to work up to adding more and more blocks to exercise those hands! Use different blocks and rubber bands if the child finds it satisfying to group the blocks.
This was another favourite! We used a cork board and message board pins and pinned them randomly on the board with spaces between them.
The rest was up to the kids. They were asked to stretch the rubber bands across the pins and explore the possibilities.
Our 7-year-old was most excited when she discovered she could make shapes using just one rubber band and make pictures with the rubber bands. She also tried stretching the rubber bands across 3 rubber bands.
This activity used small rubber bands/loom bands and large popsicle sticks.
We asked the kids to place the rubber bands on the popsicle sticks and roll them down to the opposite end. Again there were different techniques to get the rubber bands on. Sometimes two stretched fingers were used and other times it was a two-hand job. Rolling the rubber bands down the stick was another way to exercise fingers. For a further challenge, encourage patterning of the rubber bands.
Use a bottle that is a bit larger for this activity. Ask the child to stretch the rubber band over the bottle and roll it to the opposite side. Adding extra width to the bottle will add a different challenge for kids.
We found that our kids were more inclined to try stretch the rubber band over the bottle with one hand and use the other hand to hold the bottle. Perhaps because we chose a bottle that couldn’t stand upside down! Either way, we saw those little fingers stretching to place the rubber band on and working hard to roll the rubber band down.
We called this activity ‘lucky dip’ because we collected randomly collected different jars, bottles and things from around the kitchen like corks etc..
The children were then asked to wrap rubber bands around the items, create groups and also experiment with their own ideas using the items we provided and as many rubber bands as they wanted.
That’s our 10 fine motor skills ideas using rubber bands! We hope some of these ideas are useful and help your children work on their fine motor skills.
There are many other ways to strengthen hands and work on fine motor skills, these exercises would work well in combination with a range of other activities also. Stay tuned for more fine motor skills ideas that we have for the future!
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