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You are here: Home / Fine Motor / 25 Simple & Easy Hand Strengthening Activities for Kids

25 Simple & Easy Hand Strengthening Activities for Kids

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Exposing young kids to a variety of activities can help them develop their hand strength.  Here are some ideas for simple and easy hand strengthening activities for kids that will help build those little muscles.

What is Hand Strength?

Hand strength is the ability to grip or grasp objects with force.

Try out these hand strengthening activities for kids. The fun fine motor activities will build and improve strength in little hand muscles. From squeezing activities to hole punch and plunger activities, these ideas to increase hand strength are perfect for preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, occupational therapy classrooms, and at home. From theraputty, toys like squigz, and squirt guns your preschoolers will love these ideas. Check them out today.

Why is Hand Strength Important for Kids?

Children need to develop their hand strength so that they can hold a crayon, pencil, or scissors correctly.

Hand Strengthening Activities for Kids

While developing hand strength is very important, the good news is that their everyday play like climbing supporting their body weight will naturally help kids with this.

Try out these hand strengthening activities for kids. The fun fine motor activities will build and improve strength in little hand muscles. From squeezing activities to hole punch and plunger activities, these ideas to increase hand strength are perfect for preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, occupational therapy classrooms, and at home. From theraputty, toys like squigz, and squirt guns your preschoolers will love these ideas. Check them out today.

Some kids may need a little extra help to work on hand strength and develop fine motor skills.  Here are some fine motor activity ideas to help you out.

Water Guns and Spray Bottles

You can make art with squirt guns or use water guns for target games.

Try out these hand strengthening activities for kids. The fun fine motor activities will build and improve strength in little hand muscles. From squeezing activities to hole punch and plunger activities, these ideas to increase hand strength are perfect for preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, occupational therapy classrooms, and at home. From theraputty, toys like squigz, and squirt guns your preschoolers will love these ideas. Check them out today.

Fill a spray bottle with water and let kids clean windows, toys, rocks, or even produce like pumpkins or apples.  Your kids can water flower seeds or plants with a spray bottle. You can also paint with spray bottles.

Try out these hand strengthening activities for kids. The fun fine motor activities will build and improve strength in little hand muscles. From squeezing activities to hole punch and plunger activities, these ideas to increase hand strength are perfect for preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, occupational therapy classrooms, and at home. From theraputty, toys like squigz, and squirt guns your preschoolers will love these ideas. Check them out today.

Hole Punches

Kids enjoy using craft punches that come in a variety of fun shapes.  Use them to create artwork.

A plain old-fashioned hole punch provides a lot of excitement and opportunities for building hand strength as well.

Staplers

Kids can build mini-books or staple things together for art projects.

Try out these hand strengthening activities for kids. The fun fine motor activities will build and improve strength in little hand muscles. From squeezing activities to hole punch and plunger activities, these ideas to increase hand strength are perfect for preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, occupational therapy classrooms, and at home. From theraputty, toys like squigz, and squirt guns your preschoolers will love these ideas. Check them out today.

Glue Bottles

Okay….some kids REALLY love squeezing glue from a bottle and may be tempted to use LOTS and LOTS of glue.  Just remember that as they are squeezing, they are building hand strength.

Give kids opportunities to make dots and lines and squiggles with glue.  Try colored or glittery glue to mix things up a little bit.

Try out these hand strengthening activities for kids. The fun fine motor activities will build and improve strength in little hand muscles. From squeezing activities to hole punch and plunger activities, these ideas to increase hand strength are perfect for preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, occupational therapy classrooms, and at home. From theraputty, toys like squigz, and squirt guns your preschoolers will love these ideas. Check them out today.

Paint with a Squeeze Bottle

Mix up some puffy paint and let kids apply the paint to paper with squeeze bottles.  You can also experiment by trying different kinds of paint in squeeze bottles.

Try out these hand strengthening activities for kids. The fun fine motor activities will build and improve strength in little hand muscles. From squeezing activities to hole punch and plunger activities, these ideas to increase hand strength are perfect for preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, occupational therapy classrooms, and at home. From theraputty, toys like squigz, and squirt guns your preschoolers will love these ideas. Check them out today.

You don’t even need paint for squeeze bottle painting.  Fill a squeeze bottle with plain water.  Kids can use it to draw designs or make letters on concrete.

Making Balls

Encourage kids to crumble up paper to make balls for a snowball fight.  They can also ball up a sheet of foil to make moon rocks.

Try out these hand strengthening activities for kids. The fun fine motor activities will build and improve strength in little hand muscles. From squeezing activities to hole punch and plunger activities, these ideas to increase hand strength are perfect for preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, occupational therapy classrooms, and at home. From theraputty, toys like squigz, and squirt guns your preschoolers will love these ideas. Check them out today.

Tear Paper

Tear paper and use it in collages or other art projects.

tearing paper project to build hand strength

Playdough

When kids roll, squeeze, and push objects into playdough they are building hand strength.  There are also endless ways to create playdough activities for your kids.

Try out these hand strengthening activities for kids. The fun fine motor activities will build and improve strength in little hand muscles. From squeezing activities to hole punch and plunger activities, these ideas to increase hand strength are perfect for preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, occupational therapy classrooms, and at home. From theraputty, toys like squigz, and squirt guns your preschoolers will love these ideas. Check them out today.

Plungers

Pick up a couple of plungers from the dollar store and let kids attach them and then pull them up off the floor.

Try out these hand strengthening activities for kids. The fun fine motor activities will build and improve strength in little hand muscles. From squeezing activities to hole punch and plunger activities, these ideas to increase hand strength are perfect for preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, occupational therapy classrooms, and at home. From theraputty, toys like squigz, and squirt guns your preschoolers will love these ideas. Check them out today.

Sponges & Washcloths

Use a sponge or washcloth to transfer water from one container to the next.  Squeeze a sponge and push it into a plastic container.

Try out these hand strengthening activities for kids. The fun fine motor activities will build and improve strength in little hand muscles. From squeezing activities to hole punch and plunger activities, these ideas to increase hand strength are perfect for preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, occupational therapy classrooms, and at home. From theraputty, toys like squigz, and squirt guns your preschoolers will love these ideas. Check them out today.

Toys to improve hand strength

While you don’t have to spend a lot of money on activities that develop hand strength, here are a couple of great toys that many teachers and occupational therapists recommend.

Build Hand Strength with These Resources in the Store

Are you looking for additional fine motor strengthening activities for your kids?  Here are some activities in the Early Learning Ideas store.  Click on the images below to check them out.

tearing paper activities

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Try out these hand strengthening activities for kids. The fun fine motor activities will build and improve strength in little hand muscles. From squeezing activities to hole punch and plunger activities, these ideas to increase hand strength are perfect for preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, occupational therapy classrooms, and at home. From theraputty, toys like squigz, and squirt guns your preschoolers will love these ideas. Check them out today.
Use these free printable nature scavenger hunt books to encourage kids to write, draw, and read while exploring their world. Perfect for pre-k, preschool or kindergarten age kids. Use the free printables in the classroom, on the playground, during nature walks or hikes, on camping trips, in the backyard, or during summer camp. Use this emergent reader for your plant and seeds theme, spring theme, and pond theme unit and lesson plans. #preschool #preschoolactivities
Alphabet activities such as making letter collages or using letter mats are a great hands-on way to teach letter identification and reinforce letter-sounds. Here are over 200 material ideas that you can use for your collages or letter mats. A printable reference list or art and other materials is included. Better than worksheets, these are perfect hands-on activity for your preschool and pre-k classroom or lesson plans. Your young children will love this sensory learning opportunity. #preachool

Available in the Store

Kids love these hole punch activities. Use the printables to build fine motor skills, for hand strengthening, and to improve hand-eye coordination in a fun and exciting way. Perfect for your preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, special education and occupational therapy classroom. The printables include shapes and many themes and seasonal printables to use during spring, summer, winter, and fall. #finemotor #finemotorskills #preschool
Use these 11 different printable name puzzles with your preschoolers for name and literacy activities. Find ideas for the whole year! Perfect for your preschool or kindergarten classroom, or at-home learning or homeschool. Teach your kids to spell their names, construct their names, and the beginning steps to writing their names with these hands-on activities. Make learning fun in fall, winter, spring, & fall with themes from pumpkin, Thanksgiving, caterpillar, snowman, and many more!
There are so many ways that your kids can work on name practice with these editable name activity mats. Perfect for early childhood, preschool, and pre-k classroom, this is a fun way to work on name recognition, the alphabet, letter sounds, spelling their names, handwriting practice, fine motor skills...etc.. You can even include pictures. Use for back to school, the beginning of the school year, an all about me theme unit or lesson plans. #preschool #nameactivities #backtoschool
Use these 1-20 number activity mats to help your kids in preschool, pre-k and kindergarten learn counting, number recognition, one-to-one correspondence, and number sense.  The mats are a great multi-sensory tool that your kids will love. There are so many ways to explore numbers on just one page. Use playdough to form numerals, trace the dotted numbers, represent the number with finger-counting cards, ten frame, and build the number with counting cubes. #preschoolmath #prekmath #kindergarten
Use these CVC Beginning Sound Clip cards to help your kids hear and see the beginning sounds in words. They will love this hands-on early literacy activity...perfect for teaching early literacy concepts in your preschool, pre-k, or kindergarten classroom. 17 word families are included. Looking for ideas for teaching rhyming, letter sounds, phonemic awareness, and phonological awareness? These activities are perfect for your literacy centers as independent and small group activities.
These rhyming clip cards will help your kids see and hear rhymes in simple CVC words. Kids love clipping clothespins on the rhyming words in this activity. Perfect for small group or independent activities in your preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, or SPED classroom. An engaging way to teach rhyming, early literacy concepts, and phonological awareness to young children. #rhymingactivities

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