25 Simple & Easy Hand Strengthening Activities for Kids
Hand strength is essential in many aspects of life, and many kids come to preschool lacking hand strength.
Many teachers and parents struggle to motivate kids to work on developing their hand strength. Thankfully, there are plenty of playful and fun hand-strengthening activities for kids to work with them and help them develop stronger hands!
Include some of these activity ideas into your daily routine to help your kids.
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What is Hand Strength?
Hand strength is the ability to grip something tightly.
Many activities require grip strength or hand strength, including writing, drawing, playing with playdough or Lego bricks, zipping zippers, buttoning buttons, cutting with scissors, and opening packets or containers.
Just as I build strength in my arms and legs through continuous workouts, the best way to improve a child’s hand strength is through practice.
Why is Hand Strength Important for Kids?
Children with weak hands often struggle with handwriting, scissor skills, or everyday tasks like opening containers.
Children who struggle with these activities may feel frustrated or upset, affecting their self-esteem and confidence. Their frustration may manifest as behavior problems.
How Can We Help Develop Hand Strength?
Developing good hand strength is very important, and fortunately, everyday activities can help kids build those little muscles as well as core strength. Here are some simple daily activities that will help your kiddos:
- Climbing on playground equipment
- Hanging from monkey bars
- Crawling and other weight bearing activities like a wheelbarrow walk will naturally help children’s hands gain strength.
Additional everyday hand strengthening activities for preschoolers that can help exercise and build hand strength include putting toys in containers, playing in the sandbox, and opening containers.
There are so many fun ways to build strength during everyday play.
Hand Strengthening Activities for Kids
Some kids may need a little extra help working on hand strength and developing fine motor skills. Here are some fun and creative ways to help you out. I know that your kids are going to love these fun fine motor activities.
Water Gun Activities
Maiking art with squirt guns is a great way to build hand and finger strength. You can also use them for target practice.
Kids can squirt water at pieces of paper hanging on a fence if you don’t want to deal with paint in the squirt guns. Draw letters or words on the paper as an exciting way to incorporate literacy learning.
Spray Bottle Activities
Fill a spray bottle with water, then let your kids use the water bottle to clean windows, toys, rocks, or produce like pumpkins or apples. Your kids can water flower seeds or plants with a spray bottle. You can also paint with spray bottles.
Hole Punch Activities
Kids enjoy using craft punches that come in a variety of different 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. Thicker papers work best for hole punch activities. You can use a hole punch with plain card stock or construction paper or with hole punch printables.
Need some advice about which hole puncher to purchase? Ched
Printable Fine Motor Crafts
There are many benefits to crafts for preschoolers and one big benefit is that they can be a motivating way to build hand strength. Your kids will love these printable fine motor crafts. They were designed specifically to be both craft AND fine motor activities, and each thematic project includes hole punching.
There are many themes of printable fine motor crafts, including space theme crafts, pond theme crafts, dinosaur crafts, Earth Day craft activities, and spring crafts for preschoolers, plus more.
Stapler Activities
A stapler makes an excellent toy for kids to use, and it helps their hand strength.
Kids can staple sheets of paper together, or they just add staples to construction paper shapes.
Kids also feel a sense of accomplishment when they assemble little mini-books.
Glue Activities
Using a glue bottle is another simple, yet great activity for hand-strengthening.
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 straight lines, and squiggly lines with glue. They can stick things like pom poms or sequins in the dot of glue, or they can leave the dots as is to dry.
Try colored or glittery glue to mix things up a little bit. Some kids also enjoy cutting and pasting activities.
Paint with a Squeeze Bottle
Kids may be used to painting with a brush. Why not mix things up and experiment with using squeeze bottles for painting.
Puffy paint is fantastic to use in squeeze bottles.
Kids can squeeze paint onto paper to create designs, or they can use the color to trace lines, letters, or their names.
Again, If you don’t want to mess with paint, you can still get kids using squeeze bottles. Fill a squeeze bottle with plain water, and your kids can use it to draw designs or make letters on concrete.
Crumbling Paper Activities
Squeezing paper into balls also gives kids an opportunity to build hand strength. When a child crumples paper, it’s an exciting activity. It’s a sensory activity as well as hand strengthening.
Fill a tub with paper and encourage kids to crumple it up to make a “paper ball sandbox.”
They can make balls for a snowball fight. They can also ball up a sheet of foil to make moon rocks.
Tearing Paper Activities
Provide some paper and show kids how to tear the paper in half or into tiny pieces. Then, they can glue the small pieces of paper to create paper collages or torn paper art projects.
Playdough Fine Motor Activities
Playdough is a very motivating tool to build hand strength.
Using playdough provides an opportunity for them to practice smooshing, squeezing, pinching, and rolling motions. There are also endless ways to create playdough activities for your kids.
I like to encourage kids to push small objects like bolts, coins, buttons, or mini-erasers into a ball of playdough. A garlic press or an extruder are great playdough tools for young children.
Want to step it up a notch? Hide objects in theraputty instead of playdough. Theraputty is often used by Occupational Therapists. It has much more resistance than playdough, so kids have to work harder to push things into the putty.
Plunger Activities to build strength in hands
A plunger? YES! I picked this idea up from a preschool teacher at a conference. But, of course, you will make sure that it’s brand new, never used in the toilet plunger.
Pick up a couple of plungers from the Dollar Store and let kids attach them, and then pull them up off the floor.
Sponge & Washcloth Activities for Hand Strength
Soak sponges or washcloths in water until they are completely saturated. Then, encourage kids to squeeze out all of the water from the sponge or washcloth.
You can make it a game by showing them how to soak up the water in one container and then transfer it by squeezing it into another container. You can challenge your kids to see how quickly they can move the water
Build Hand Strength with Rubber Band Activities
You can even use office supplies for fine motor and hand-strengthening activities.
Kids can grasp the rubber band in their hands and pull it back to stretch it out. They can stretch rubberbands around cans or pool noodles.
Clothespin Fine motor Activities
Clothespins seem to be a favorite hand strengthening activity. Kids can use clothespins to attach things together or hand something from a clothesline.
You can easily incorporate clothespins into learning activities by using counting clip cards or rhyming clip cards.
Bubble Wrap Activities
The next time you get a delivery from Amazon, save the bubble wrap. Encourage your kids to use their fingers to squeeze and pop the bubbles. Do they have enough pinch strength to do it?
Tennis Ball Activities
Carefully cut a slit in a tennis ball. Then your kids can squeeze the tennis ba
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.
The links below are affiliate links There will be no additional cost to you if you purchase something from the link, but I receive a small commission each time someone makes a purchase through one of the links.
Robot Hand & Robot Claw Gift Set Bundle – Who doesn’t like to operate a robot hand? The great thing is that kids won’t even realize that they are building strength while they are having fun.
Fat Brain Toys Original Squigz Starter 24 Piece Set – This suction construction toy works in the bathtub, on a smooth table, or on a window.
Therapy Putty – Hide gems, coins, or small erasers in the theraputty and ask kids to work through the stiff substance to see if they can find the hidden treasures.
Snapper Fidget Toys – Kids need to squeeze this toy together so that the suction cups connect… perfect for building strength in little hands.
Squeezy Animals with Pop Out Eyes – Nothing is more motivating than squeezing an animal and having its silly eyes start to bulge.
Froggy Feeding Fun Activity Set by Learning Resources – In this fun game kids have to squeeze the frog so that they can put a bug in its mouth.
Build Hand Strength with These Resources in the Store
Are you looking for additional hand-strengthening activities ideas for kids? Here are some printable activities in the Early Learning Ideas store. Click on the images below to check them out.
Additional Ideas to Build Hand Strength
Are you looking for additional hand strengthening activities for kids? Check out these ideas and activities from Early Learning Ideas.
