Hand and Finger Strength

Building strong hands and fingers is an important stage of a child’s development. This comes before learning to write.

As your child strengthens their fine motor muscles, they will start to do more things by themselves.

In Reception class children will:

  • Use paintbrushes, chalk, crayons, felt pens and pencils to make controlled marks.
  • Use scissors.
  • Use cutlery at mealtimes.
  • Build with construction sets.
  • Start to write letters.

Having strong hands and fingers will help your child play and achieve everyday tasks more easily.

Top Tip

If they’re finding small movements tricky, keep practicing big movements like rolling, stretching, throwing a ball.

Activities to Help Your Child

There are lots of fun activities you can do to help your child build up their hand and finger strength.

Try the activities below!

Construction and building blocks

Any kind of building or construction help children to use hand control skills.

Try to build a tower with blocks, yoghurt pots, toilet rolls or cereal boxes.

Spray bottle

Using water in a spray bottle might seem simple but it works all the right muscles and children love it!

Wash and rinse any spray bottle and fill with water. Let them use the spray outside, in the bath, or on windows.

They might need your help at first as they build up their strength. Keep going until they can do it on their own.

Pairing socks

Pairing a pile of socks might sound like a boring task, but it can be great for helping strengthen those little hands!

Ask your child to pick a pair and put one inside the other. This will not only help their colour and pattern recognition skills but also their grip strength and fine motor skills as well.

Pretend washing up

Place a washing up bowl on the floor with some pots and pans. We recommend not using anything sharp or breakable.

Ask your child to “wash up” – picking up and moving different sizes of pots will help strengthen their fingers and hands.

Building towers

Have a competition with your child using building blocks or other suitable toys.

Allow 30 seconds before judging whose tower is tallest.

This will help their coordination and fine motor skills as well as their grip strength.

Popping bubble wrap

This is a fun activity that helps to boost fine motor skills and grip strength.

Give your child some bubble wrap and ask them to pop each bubble using different fingers and a thumb.

Top Tip

The more they use their hands in different ways, the stronger they will get.

Handy Videos

These videos provide extra information on building your child’s hand and finger strength.

This page is part of our Ready Steady School series, designed to help your little one make the most of their start to school life.

You might also find these other topics useful:

  • Recognising your name
  • Personal hygiene
  • Making choices
  • Listening and attention
  • Talking
  • Getting dressed
  • Mealtime independence
  • Talking about your feelings