I must admit, this LEGO head fine motor activity that my son has been doing every day with therapy putty for the last few weeks has me laughing every time. There’s just something so funny about LEGO heads to me! Is that weird? I have written before about my youngest son’s struggle with his fine motor skills. The biggest challenge is his handwriting, but we also work on increasing his fine motor strength and dexterity, which is what this activity is meant to address.
They key to doing fine motor work at home with my son is not to let him think he is doing therapy. If he knew my motivation he would cross his arms and walk away. That’s why this particular exercise works so well. Plus, it’s just fun to play with putty. (Note: this post contains affiliate links.)
What you need: (in no particular order)
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- An assortment of LEGO minifigures. You probably already have those!
- Therapy Putty. I purchased a CanDo Theraputty set and it has been working really well for us. I like that there are different strengths from which to choose.
- A sense of humor.
- A LEGO loving kid.
Instructions: (although you probably figured it out already)
- Remove LEGO minifigure heads (is it just me, or are LEGO faces angrier these days?). You can do this yourself or ask your child to do it. It depends on the mood of New Kid how I proceed. Sometimes I prep the activity for him so it’s waiting for him when he comes home from school.
- Flatten a ball of putty, scatter heads and fold them into the putty.
- Encourage your child to find the heads and return them to their bodies. (This all sounds a little macabre, doesn’t it?)
Variations
- Hide all body parts in the putty. We’ve done this, too. You could use a different color putty (The CanDo Theraputty comes in a set of 6 colors. Each color is a different strength.) for each body part or hide a complete set of parts in each color. Or mix it up each time to keep it fresh.
- Hide small LEGO pieces in a putty ball and challenge your child to build something with the pieces.
- You can also do this with play dough, although the putty provides much more resistance. For play dough ideas see 34 items to use with play dough to practice fine motor skills.
So far, my 5 year old has not gotten bored with this fine motor activity at all. I try to do it at least once a day to help increase his hand strength. You can see in the photos that there is a lot of pushing and pulling and maneuvering of his fingers so I’m assuming it helps with dexterity, too.
Do you have a fine motor activity that your child particularly enjoys? I’m always looking for new ideas!
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Christine says
I’ve toyed with doing this before (pun intended 😉 ) but hubby is so precious about lego he won’t let me! It looks just as awesome as I’d hoped.
Erica MomandKiddo says
Ha ha ha! I haven’t had andy problems with the theraputty sticky, but the play dough does get caught in the small bits of the heads so your husband has a point!
ben says
Try putting pegs on a piece of string, to increase difficulty you can have them put it into colours or even a pattern.