Somehow I’m always finding loom bands scattered all over our house. Am I alone? For a bit of fun I decided we’d try a dinosaur loom band stretch for find motor development.
Dinosaur Loom Band Stretch for Fine Motor Development
Of all things that has lasted the ages of both my girls, it’s the dinosaur figurines. We’ve used them many times, as I’m sure you’ve seen these appear in previous posts, such as my 3 ingredient Dinosaur play dough.
To combine two favourites in our house, I thought it would be a bit of fun to put loom bands and the dinosaur figurines together in the same activity.
Recommended age: 3 years+
(Strict and active supervision is required at all times)
Quite simply, all you need for this activity is some elastic (or rubber) bands and some plastic figurines. We used loom bands because they are always around our house.
Purpose of this activity
The task is simple, ask your child to try and stretch the bands around their given figurine.
As you can imagine, this is an activity that would be ideal to do at preschool, school or home.
You’ll probably find that your child starts off with some easier options. Pulling the elastic bands around the feet or tail is common.
As they grow in confidence, you’ll find they work harder to stretch the bands further.
Fine Motor Skills
This type of activity is brilliant for developing a child’s fine motor skills. It really challenges them to use a pinch hold of the band and use some control to hold it in place and/or stretch it to where they want it to go.
Add to the challenge
Of course there are always opportunities to increase the level of difficulty, when it comes to all my activities that I share.
If you’re wanting to challenge your child further, once they’ve added lots of rubber loom bands and stretched it over their dinosaur, you can ask them to then remove it.
That involves a whole new level of difficulty.
So next time your child has their dinosaur figures out or they’ve left a lot of loom bands all over the house, put them to use!
Get them to to do this dinosaur loom band stretch for fine motor development. They’ll love it and not realise how good it if for the small muscles in their hand.
Is this something your child would love doing?
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My son, Joseph 2.5 years, already does this! He uses bigger rubber bands, but he loves stretching them around his animal figures. I didn’t realize it was doing something good for his hands. Now I’ll see if the younger one, Jonathan 16 months, would be interested.
That’s so wonderful Cheryln! I love when learning comes as a great surprise.
Hope you’re well.