Pegs are ideal for getting little hands working to develop fine motor skills. At first glance a pack of wooden pegs may not seem like to most exciting or eye-catching resource…think again. With a little imagination, a simple pack of wooden, pound shop pegs can become a tool for so many play tasks!

Here is a round up of lots of playful ways to use pegs, encouraging fine motor development and early learning skills.

Occupational Therapy Tips:

• When giving a child the peg, place it in the palm of their hand and encourage them to move it into the right place with their fingers and thumb, without using their bodies or a tabletop.

• Use a variety of pegs with different widths and resistances to build up muscle strength in their fingers and thumbs for pre-writing.

• When hanging clothes, encourage them to reach up higher than their shoulders, challenging their balance.

• If they are finding pegging tricky, have them sit on a chair at a table with their forearms supported for greater trunk and upper body stability.

• Always encourage them to use both hands – one for the clothes or paper, the other for the peg.

Keeping it real

Getting little ones to help with chores can be a good way to develop their functional skills. When hanging your washing out encourage your little one to hang smaller items (socks/pants) onto a low level line or clothes horse. Show your child how the pegs keep the clothes in place and stop them from blowing off the line.

Role play

Create a washing station for dolls clothes with a bucket for washing clothes and a line to hang them up. Talking about words like ‘wet’ whilst feeling the clothes can help to develop your child’s understanding of concept words. It is a good idea to focus on one concept word at a time and not to use the opposites at the same time. E.g. ‘wet’ and ‘not wet’ or ‘dry’ and ‘not dry’. This helps the child to learn and store the word with a secure understanding, rather than confusing the opposite concepts.

Small world

Clothes pegs and lolly sticks can be used together to build fences to create a farm or zoo when playing with small world animals. We used them to create fences for a show jumping competition with toy horses.

Literacy

Order pictures from a story or recipe on a washing line to help your child to understand sequences.

Numeracy

Washing lines are great for creating numberlines. Use pegs to order number cards from 0 – 10 and beyond. Try to always start a numberline or counting with the number zero. Zero is an important number concept and it is a difficult concept to introduce later on if a child has consistently learnt to count or order from 1. Once early ordering skills are established try ordering a selection of non-consecutive numbers from smallest to largest. A washing line with pairs of socks is a great way to introduce counting in pairs. We also like using pegs as counters to help with simple addition sums.

Animal Crafts

Pegs make great legs for animals, ears for bunnies or even spines on a Stegosaurus… the possibilities are endless!

 Do check out our pegs Pinterest board for further inspiration! https://www.pinterest.co.uk/16f480f76a3eb8e535dd82355e468f/fine-motor-skills-with-pegs/

To get more top tips and tools join our Confident Communicators Group (supporting development for 2 – 5 year olds).

The group is open to parents/ carers/ grandparents and early years practitioners.

Do come along and join us!