Building fine motor skills is sometimes hard work, but you can make it more fun with this personalized sneaker craft. Children with sensory problems are often fatigued and frustrated by fine motor activity. Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorders dysgraphia, autism, and other disorders may avoid fine motor tasks because they are uncomfortable and even irritating. This fun activity is a great way to embed fine motor skills in a high-interest project that builds skills your child needs to be successful in school.
Difficulty: Easy
Time Required: Varies Depending on Child's Hand Coordination and Fine Motor Skills
Here's How:
- This project will give your child practice with pencil grip, coordination, and grasping skills. Your child will also get practice with visual planning and organization of visual space. Begin by having your child use a piece of paper and pencil to sketch out her design ideas.
- Get ideas from favorite magazines, books, clip art, photos, or your son or daughter's imagination.
- Remove the laces from the shoe before your begin for easier drawing. Have your child sketch out the chosen designs on the plain, white canvas sneaker using light pencil strokes. We used inexpensive canvas sneakers. Check prices here. (Target has some less expensive sneakers to consider.)
- Color your design using permanent fine-tipped markers. Allow designs to dry as you work to avoid smearing. Check prices here.
- Make a mistake? Keep iron on patches, sequins, or decorative trim available for your child to cover any unintended marks. Treat mistakes as opportunities for creativity to help your child actually enjoy fixing them.
- After sneaker is thoroughly dry, have your child re-lace the shoes.
- To clean the sneakers, only spot cleaning with a mild detergent is recommended. This will help the colors remain bright for as long as possible.
- Check out the sneaker we made in this image gallery.
What You Need
- White Canvas Sneakers - We used inexpensive canvas sneakers.
- Multicolored Permanent Markers - We used the fine tipped type.
- Paper for planning
- Pencils for sketching out designes
- Clip art, photos, magazine images, or other models (optional)
