How to exercise your brain and motoric skills?

Did you know that games are not only fun, but can also help you train your brain and fine motor skills? Fine motor skills are the skills you daily need to make small movements and to complete little tasks like grasping a spoon to eat soup or to button up your trousers. It’s more or less the connection and coordination between the brain and our muscular strength. Sometimes children and adults can use a little help to sharpen those fine motoric skills. And what better way to do that with games that also tickle your brain!

Why practice your fine motor skills?

When you or your child is not or no longer able to perform small tasks due to insufficient fine motor skills, it takes away a little bit of your autonomy. Not being able to tie your own shoes for example might upset or frustrate adults or children. By practicing fine motor skills, you improve a person’s independence and confidence. It also helps to improve your hand-eye coordination and has said to improve children’s academic performances later in life. Examples of small tasks that require fine motor skills are brushing your teeth, pulling a thread through a needle, using cutlery, typing, …

Fun and games to train your fine motor skills and brains!

A fun way to train your finger- and hand mobility, strength and coordination is to play board games! For young children, Safari Park Jr. and Three Little Piggies Deluxe could do the trick! Safari Park Jr. is a 2-in-1 learning game for pre-schoolers that combines learning about shapes and concepts like left, right, in front and behind with practicing fine motor skills. The game board and pieces have a shape sorting design. Kids need to put the animals with different shapes on the bottom on the play board by placing them in the correct wholes. The animals then need to be slid to the correct position on the game board. This sliding motion works as a pathfinder, helping hand-eye coordination.

Three Little Piggies Deluxe is also a game for pre-schoolers where children need to use fine motor skills (grasping movements) to place the animals on the game board and to carefully place the houses over the little piglets to protect them from the wolf. This puzzle game also practices logic, planning and spatial insight. A nice extra is the story booklet that comes with the game. Turning pages in books are a perfect tool to improve fine motor skills.

If you want to practice your pincer grasp and turning movements, Grizzly Gears is your game! This learning game requires you to bring the animals from one side of the gameboard to the other in the correct order by turning the trees. Kids from the age of 7 to adults train flexible thinking, planning and spatial insights next to finger movements.

For adults, the IQ range can bring fun practice! The IQ Puzzler Pro or the IQ Six Pro for example are two packing problem games where you can play both 2D and 3D challenges. Placing the puzzle pieces requires you to use the pincer grasp and completing 3D challenges requires hand-eye coordination. If the puzzle pieces are a bit too small, you can always go for the IQ Puzzler Pro XXL, an extra-large version of IQ Puzzler Pro with 188 challenges. All 3 of these games practice your spatial insights, concentration, and problem-solving skills.

More information and sources:

The University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences (26 June 2020). How to Improve Fine Motor Skills, Includes Printable Activity Sheets. University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences. https://www.usa.edu/blog/how-to-improve-fine-motor-skills/

Kristen Gasnick (6 October 2022). Fine-Motor Skills: Everything You Need to Know. Very Well Health. https://www.verywellhealth.com/fine-motor-skills-overview-examples-and-improvement-5226046

Jeremy Rodriguez (3 November 2022). How to Improve Fine Motor Skills in Adults. Griswold. https://www.griswoldhomecare.com/blog/2022/november/how-to-improve-fine-motor-skills-in-adults/

Manpreet Singh (12 October 2020). 7 Helpful Board Games for Building Fine Motor Skills. Number Dyslexia. https://numberdyslexia.com/7-helpful-board-games-for-building-fine-motor-skills/