Students’ Fine Motor Skills… Aren’t Fine. The Arts Can Help.

Carrie Kennedy

Jul 17

4 min read

With the increase in digital media, many young children have been spending more time tapping buttons and swiping screens and far less time doing the hands-on activities that build their fine motor skills. Researchers are now documenting the results of this change—

and it’s not good news. What IS good news is that the arts can help put those little hands back to work.

Fine motor skills are the small, controlled movements we make with our hands and fingers. These movements may seem simple to adults, but they require strength, coordination, dexterity… and lots of practice to develop!

Young children do use their hands when they’re controlling a device. But those swiping, tapping, and pinching movements are limiting. Why? Because there’s no difference in texture, no resistance against the hands, no actual manipulation of a dimensional object, and far less sensory feedback for the brain to process. Research is now showing that frequent

use of technology “fundamentally alters” the way a child’s brain develops because tech does not provide the “purposeful motor activity involving complex actions and manipulations of objects in 3-dimensional space.”

Put simply, these findings show that when a child’s hands aren’t feeling as many new things, their brains aren’t learning as many new things. So both researchers and pediatric experts emphasize the importance of providing children with opportunities for active, novel, and meaningful hands-on play.

That’s where the arts come in very handy. (See what we did there?)

The visual arts keep little hands busy.
Drawing with crayons, controlling a paintbrush, cutting with scissors, folding paper, sculpting with clay, drawing with chalk on the sidewalk, weaving with yarn—all of these movements help children build fine motor dexterity and coordination. Exploring textures
and using the hands to solve problems and actually create builds neural pathways for focus and coordination.
Music develops coordination and control.
Clapping along with a steady beat, tapping rhythms on a drum, shaking a shaker, striking rhythm sticks, or using small percussion instruments all require children to coordinate their hands, control their movements, and respond to patterns. These activities build strength, timing, hand-eye coordination, and motor control and build the foundation for the more precise finger and hand movements needed to play a musical instrument.
And then there’s handwriting.
Learning to type letters on devices is simply not the same as writing by hand. That’s because striking a key is the same movement—whether we’re typing the letter G, M, or K. But actually forming the shape of those three letters with a pencil requires different, coordinated movements. This complexity gives the developing brain more information to process and allows for richer learning experiences.

When children are exploring the arts, they aren’t thinking about strengthening their fingers or improving their hand-eye coordination. Instead, they’re making, building, exploring, and experiencing the powerful process that goes into creating something with their own hands.

Our senses are intricately connected to the brain, and our hands are one of the most important tools the brain has to learn about the world. When children cut, draw, color, build, dig in the dirt, put their hands in flour, clap out a rhythm, or write with a pencil—they’re processing sensory information and solving problems. These movements are also working

at a neural level, connecting sensory input and motor activity in ways that support attention, spatial reasoning, memory, emotional regulation, and other cognitive skills.

Parents and educators don’t necessarily need to eliminate all screentime. But it is important to provide children with opportunities to discover the world with their own two hands.

Fine motor skills and the Artifact Creative curriculum:

While Artifact Creative’s lesson content is delivered online, the screen is not intended to be the place where all the learning happens. Throughout our curriculum, we’ve designed intentional activities and projects that ask students to put their hands and their brains to work—drawing, writing, creating, building, moving, and playing. Technology can provide the information, instruction, and inspiration, but we know the most important learning happens when students discover the arts through hands-on experiences.

Quoted data from:

Martzog, Philipp, and Sebastian Paul Suggate. “Screen Media Are Associated with Fine Motor Skill Development in Preschool Children.” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 60 (2022): 363–373.

Other resources:

McKenna, Chris, 5 Habits of the Tech-Ready Family: Raising Wise Kids in a Wild Digital World. Zondervan, 2026.
Twenge, Jean M., 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World: How Parents Can Stop Smartphones, Social Media, and Gaming from Taking Over Their Children’s Lives. Atria Books, 2025.

About the author:

Carrie Kennedy spent almost two decades in classrooms—including teaching art, English, and science— and now serves as the Director of Curriculum Content and Development at Artifact Creative. Kennedy is the author of four books and has written and lectured extensively on the subject of creativity and learning.

When students study subjects like music, visual art, theater, literature, dance, creative writing, and history, they learn to make meaningful connections to their own lives and to the world around them. Artifact Creative develops digital and hands-on educational material in these rich areas of the arts and humanities to inspire critical, creative, and compassionate thinking and to serve as an essential foundation for authentic, lifelong learning.

For more information, visit ArtiFactCreative.org or contact Dana.Corradi@ArtiFactCreative.org