Weak little hands?

I often get questions from parents and educators about how to go about improving hand strength in kids.  Kids have decreased hand strength for a variety of reasons-  low muscle tone, Down Syndrome, kids with small hands, cerebral palsy, etc.  Often times we notice weakness during self help tasks or fine motor tasks when we note that the child can't open containers, pull on mittens, shoes or boots, can't take marker caps off of markers or can't open and close a scissors.

There are over 25 muscles in the hand.  Development of higher-level manipulation skills require a good balance of strength and stability throughout the hand.  As a result, hand strength is another one of those issues to address with kids to improve their handwriting skills (see original post, "Secrets to Good Handwriting" from 5-28-13).

Activities used to strengthen the small muscles of the hands involve materials and tools that provide
resistance.  Here are some activities that we can engage kids in to address hand and finger strength:

-play with hole/shape punches and staplers
-pick up items using tongs, tweezers or clothespins:  aluminum foil balls, cotton balls, beads, small toys

-play with squirt guns, bulb syringes/squeezers, medicine dropper
-play dough -- squeeze, flatten with hands or a rolling pin, make cut outs by pushing cutters into the dough
-theraputty:  comes in various resistances.  Pull, push pegs into the putty, find hidden beads in putty, roll into long strips (“snakes”) and cut into pieces using a scissors

-cut with a scissors: vary the resistance of the paper by cutting through thicker paper
-popbeads, duplos, legos, bristle blocks
-squeeze stress balls and squeezy fidget toys
-pushing push pins into a bulletin board

Pushing push pins into a vertical board to make the first letter of my little friend's name.

-buttoning, snapping activities
-pop bubble wrap with fingers
-stirring things in a bowl that have varying resistances (pudding, brownie mix, etc)