Gross Motor and Fine Motor Skills for Writing: What Every Teacher Should Know

Building strong and effective fine and gross motor skills is an essential part of early years development. These skills are vitally important and have a myriad of cross-curricular benefits, including supporting the confident and capable writers of the future. After all, writing requires physical strength and coordination that starts developing long before a child holds a pencil!

Gross Motor Skills for Writing (The Big Movements)

In order to sit in a favourable writing position and control pencil movement, children need core strength, shoulder stability, and arm muscle control.

Develop these skills by: 

• Playing with ‘sky writing’. Ask children to use their whole arm to draw giant circles, waves, or other shapes in the air. Add ribbons or scarves and some music for a fun dance activity!
• Big drawing on the floor outdoors with chalk or paintbrushes and water. Children can make patterns, practise graphemes or just make marks that are meaningful to them. Encourage large arm movements!
• Encouraging climbing, crawling through tunnels and den building to build up the large muscle groups needed for postural control.
• Diving into mud kitchen play. Carrying buckets of water, repositioning tyres or large pieces of wood, tipping and pouring with pots and pans filled with mud – the mud kitchen is the perfect place to develop gross motor movement.
• Playing throwing and catching games.
• Sweeping with brooms! A practical (and fun) skill that will develop large arm movements and shoulder control. 

Fine Motor Skills for Writing (The Small Movements)

In order to perfect pencil control and precise letter formation, children need to develop dexterity of their fingers and wrists, hand strength and a strong pincer grip.

Develop these skills by:

• Providing 'fine motor’ or ‘finger gym’ stations. Children can use tweezers to pick up pom-poms or other loose parts, practise threading beads onto strings or have a go at simple weaving. 
• Playing with dough or clay to strengthen hand muscles. Encourage the children to squash, squeeze, roll, pinch, pull and shape the dough or clay using their whole hand and each of their individual fingers. 
• Providing tools in your classroom provision that help to build hand and finger strength. These could include: spray bottles, tea strainers, tweezers, hole punches, treasury tags, beads and string etc.
• Cutting with scissors. Allow children to experiment cutting freely with scissors, as well as following simple shapes or patterns like straight lines, curves or zig zags.
• Allowing children to freely experiment with mark making using a variety of tools: paintbrushes, chalk, crayons, sticks in sand/mud, whiteboards and pens, fingers in shaving foam etc.

Mark Making

Mark making in play is an important part of early writing, and valuing this stage encourages children to become confident writers, without fear of putting a pencil to a page or even assigning meaning to the marks they are making.

Through mark making, children will develop the skills they need for later writing and will eventually start to make marks with a purpose. When they reach this stage, they may be able to talk about what they have ‘written’ or drawn.

You can support early mark making by ensuring that you provide opportunities for children to record their ideas in a multitude of ways. Here are some ideas for resources you could include as part of your provision: 

• Paintbrushes and water on a dry floor.
• Paintbrushes made with leaves or grass tied onto twigs.
• Chalk, crayons, pens, pencils, charcoal, paintbrushes, paint and paper.
• Whiteboards and pens or chalkboards and chalk.
• Wet sand, shaving foam or mud (children can make marks using their fingers or sticks).
• Sticks and twigs in a variety of shapes and sizes.
• Stones or flint to make marks on the playground floor.

By prioritising these physical milestones alongside language development, we give every child the strong, well-rounded start they deserve. Gross motor strength, fine motor dexterity and confident mark making are the unsung heroes of the foundational literacy stage, quietly laying the groundwork for everything that follows

Frequently Asked Questions

What are gross motor skills and why do they matter for writing? 

Gross motor skills involve the large muscle groups that power whole-body movements such as running, climbing and reaching. For writing, children need the core strength and shoulder stability that these skills develop in order to sit comfortably at a desk and control their arms with intention. Without this foundation, even the most enthusiastic young writer will find the physical act of writing tiring and difficult.

What are fine motor skills and how do they support early writing?

Fine motor skills involve the small, precise movements of the fingers, hands and wrists. In early years settings, developing these skills helps children establish the tripod grip and form letters accurately. A child can have a strong grasp of phonics concepts and still struggle to write if their fine motor development hasn't kept pace, which is why these skills need to be nurtured alongside phonics teaching rather than after it.

What is mark making and why is it important?

Mark making is when young children make intentional marks on a surface with a purpose. It does not mean writing letters, but it does mean a child is beginning to communicate through marks, whether in paint, mud, sand or on paper. Celebrating this stage builds confidence and removes the fear of putting pencil to paper, making children far more willing and expressive writers when formal writing begins.

What are mark making tools?

The term ‘mark making tools’ refers to anything that children use to make marks or write with. The tools can vary widely, from the child’s own fingers, to pencils, chalk, or sticks

When should children start developing a pencil grip?

Most children develop a functional pencil grip between the ages of four and six, though this varies from child to child. Readiness depends heavily on prior gross and fine motor development. Encouraging a correct grip before a child has the necessary hand strength can lead to habits that become difficult to correct later on, so building the physical foundations first is always time well spent.

How can I support gross motor development in an early years classroom?

Simple, playful activities work best. Sky writing, where children use their whole arm to draw shapes or letters in the air, is particularly effective. Ribbon dancing, large-scale chalk drawing, climbing, crawling through tunnels and sweeping with brooms all build the core strength and shoulder stability children need for writing. The key is to make these activities a regular, valued part of the school day rather than an occasional add-on.

How can I support fine motor development in the classroom?

A dedicated fine motor station or finger gym is one of the most practical and effective approaches. Stocking it with tweezers and pom-poms, threading activities, play dough, scissors and clothes pegs gives children regular, purposeful practice with the hand strength and dexterity they need. Little and often works best, so building these activities into daily routines makes a significant difference over time.

How does physical development connect to foundational phonics?

Foundational phonics is about preparing the whole child for reading and writing, not just teaching sound and letter knowledge. Physical development sits right at the heart of that preparation. A child who has the strength to sit well, the dexterity to hold a pencil and the confidence to make marks on a page is in a far stronger position to access phonics learning than one who has not yet had the chance to develop these skills.