Improve your toddler’s fine motor skills with this DIY Robot. It’s a versatile fine motor activities box, that’s easy to make, and costs around $2. Moreover, for everyone between 12 and 36 months is a great pal to play with. To see what fine motor activities can you do with the DIY robot, click here.
Like Dr. Montessori once said, “The hands are the instruments of man’s intelligence.” And those two perfect tools are what we want to train with our DIY robot.
But first things first:
What Are Fine Motor Skills?
Here is one short, but clear fine motor skills definition:
FMS are achieved when children learn to use their smaller muscles, like muscles in the hands, fingers, and wrists.Study.com
However, I need always some time to realize definitions. So here are 15 good fine motor skills examples to get a better picture of what are fine motor skills exactly and how important they are:
- Playing a musical instrument
- Turning pages
- Holding small items
- Brushing your teeth, hair
- Washing your hands with soap
- Buttoning & zipping
- Lacing shoes
- Opening and closing bottles and containers with caps & lids
- Opening and closing doors, locks etc. with keys
Huh. Okay. Well, I think it’s pretty clear, that this is dexterity. And all these things are essential for everyone every day, if not every minute of our lives. We take them as given, not even as skills that we have developed a long long time ago.
Thus, mastery of dexterity requires not only precision and coordination but also a great amount of concentration and practice. So here is where our DIY robot comes into action. With your toddler of course.
DIY Robot from a small, used cardboard box, plastic bottlenecks and screws, a blackboard/ chalkboard sticker, magnetic pompons and crayons
- 1 small cardboard box with opening or window (I used here one cardboard box from a 6 pack glasses from Ikea)
- 3 bottlenecks with screws cut out from plastic bottles
- Chalkboard sticker enough to cover the cardboard box
- Optional: small magnetic board with 6 pom-poms
- Small LED fla