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Fine Motor Freebie
Free Alphabet Building Mats
Strengthen fine motor skills and letter recognition with these FREE letter building alphabet mats for literacy centers, morning tubs, or early finisher activities!
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15+ Fine Motor Sight Word Activities
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Practicing sight words is an important part of any primary classroom literacy block. With so many new words for students to master within a school year, keeping up with a rotating list of centers often feels like so much work.ย On top of that, making sight words stick, so that students can both decode and encode each word, is a difficult task. Take your sight word practice to a whole new level with visual, kinesthetic and tactile fine motor sight word activities!
These activities are sure to engage your students and help them easily learn high frequency words. The best part is that these activities are low-prep and work with any word or spelling list! No need to make new copies each week or recreate the wheel! Take a look at my favorite fine motor sight word activities you can use all year long!ย

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Sight Word Activities Setup
The word building area in my classroom has eight tubs containing different word building activities. I introduce these fine motor sight word activities two at a time. Once I have modeled how to appropriately complete each activity, the students who are at our “Word Building” station are able to choose which word building activity they would like to complete during center time. They simply grab the appropriate tub, and head off to begin building the words from our list of sight words and/or heart words.
The key to success with retention of any sight word list is practice, practice, practice. When you create word lists for a week, work in some words students have already mastered. The more times students are exposed to decoding, encoding and building these words, the more fluent they will become!

I recommend swapping out the bins that students have access to every few weeks or so. Keeping the novelty alive will boost engagement, and in turn, help our students grow!
Fine Motor Sight Word Activities
Building Bricks
Students love using building bricks, so being able to include them as part of your sight word activities is sure to boost engagement. These word cards can be used with any type of building bricks and baseplate.

Snap Cubes
Similar to the building bricks sight word activities, the students will also strengthen finger muscles as they snap cubes together.

Alphabet Clips
These alphabet clothespins came from the Target Dollar Spot, but I have also made alphabet clips by hot gluing letter tiles (think old Scrabble tiles) to clothespins. The students will use their pincer muscles to squeeze the clothespins open, as they clip each letter onto the word card.

Pattern Blocks
Pattern blocks aren’t just for math time! They also work well for sight word activities. These word cards require excellent fine motor execution as students manipulate pattern blocks to build each high frequency word!

Pom Poms
To help develop pincer muscles, students pinch pom poms with tweezers as they build each word.

Play Dough
Play dough is a classroom favorite! If play dough is involved, you can be your students will be all in for the activity! To complete this fine motor sight word activity, students can build the word directly on the card or they can use the card as a guide and build the word on their desk or table.

Alphabet Stamps
For these fine motor sight word activities, the students can build each word with alphabet stamps by pressing stamps into ink and building the word on a sheet of paper, or they can push the alphabet stamps into play dough.

As an alternative, students can also stamp the words into kinetic sand.
Popsicle Sticks
Using plain or colored Popsicle sticks, students can build each word. Some letters will require 2″ sticks, or you can cut a regular stick in half.

Tip: laminate sheets of card stock to use as the work mats. The wax does not stick to the laminated paper, making it easy to peel off.
Alphabet Beads
To sneak in some extra fine motor practice, students can use alphabet beads to lace words on a string.

As an alternative, you can also have students string the beads on a pipe cleaner. Just make sure the alphabet beads are wide enough to fit on the pipe cleaner.
Magnetic Letters
Of all the sight word activities, magnetic letters seem to always be a favorite. They are a classic that students love year after year!

If you want the students to build the words directly on the card, the word cards fit 1.5″ magnetic letters from Educational Insights. If you do not have that size, simply have students use the card as a guide while they build right on their desk or table.
Letter Cubes
Letter cubes provide a great visual example of how many consonants and vowels are in a word. If you do not have letter cubes, you can create them on your own by writing letters on Unifix cubes using a black dry erase marker or even Sharpie marker.

Tip: Just be sure to use rubbing alcohol or hand sanitizer to remove the Sharpie marker.
Pony Beads
Another great sight word activity for strengthening pincer muscles is building words with tweezers and pony beads. The pony beads are a little trickier than pom poms, forcing students to really focus as they build each word. Using your thumb and index fingers to place the beads inside each letter works too!

Paint and Cotton Swabs
Students dip cotton swabs into paint to complete this sight word activity. You can use a combination of paint colors or just offer one color at a time. This is one of those sight word activities that students always seem to enjoy!

Push Pins
Poking each letter in the word with push pins is a great way to sharpen fine motor control.

Stickers
Peeling and sticking stickers is a great fine motor activity. Plus this is a great way to use up the hodgepodge stack of stickers we all have piling up in a cabinet or drawer.
Wax Sticks
Wax sticks are so flexible. They can be bent into any letter shape and used to build word after word. They hold their shape, but also don’t look warped after being straightened out again. So, you can use one set for years to come!

Any Manipulative
Any household craft supply or classroom manipulative you have lying around, like these counting bears, likely could be used to form letters and words! Mini eraser work well for fine motor sight word activities too! Don’t be afraid to think outside of the box, and use what you already have in stock in your classroom!

Tools for Fine Motor Sight Word Activities
Here is a quick list of the tools for the fine motor sight word activities:
- Building Bricks
- Snap Cubes
- Pattern Blocks
- Popsicle Sticks
- Mini Popsicle Sticks
- Magnetic Letters
- Gator Grabber Tweezers
- 1/2โณ Pom Poms
- 1โณ Pom Poms
- Play Dough
- Pony Beads
- Kinetic Sand
- Alphabet Stamps
- Play Dough Stamps
- Alphabet Cubes
- Alphabet Beads
- Pipe Cleaners
- Mini Clothespins
- Clothespins
- Buttons
- Mini Erasers
- Wax Sticks
- Push Pins
- Paint
- Paint Tray
- Cotton Swabs
- Mini Stickers
Fine Motor Sight Word Activities
Grab all 15+ fine motor sight word activities here!

More Fine Motor Activities
Love these fine motor sight word activities? Be sure to check out these fine motor name activities, which use the same manipulatives!

Strengthen fine motor skills during morning work with these 20 January fine motor activities!

Discover 15 of my favorite everyday fine motor tools here!

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Ashley Sharp
As a dedicated Kindergarten teacher for nearly 20 years, I believe the words “fun, play, and creativity” can sit right alongside the words “developmentally appropriate, engaging, and rigorous.” Learning is meant to be fun and messy!
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