Painting the Bullseye – A Fine Motor Skills Activity
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A few weeks ago I shared with you that we had to stop my son’s occupational therapy due to finances so we have been coming up with creative ways to do “therapy” at home – which is really more fun than work! (the best kind!) Today was really quite hot here in Florida despite it being almost Christmas so we headed outdoors. Our first activity? Working on our fine motor skills by “painting” the bullseye.
Materials Needed:
A Large piece of paper or cardboard
Washable Paint
Medicine Syringe
I’m sure just by looking at the pictures above you can guess what our activity was! I took a long piece of paper (you can use cardboard or even the back of wrapping paper if you need) and drew round circles on it for “targets”. Then we gave each of our boys a small dish of washable paint along with a medicine syringe. The object was to suck up paint in the syringe and then “shoot” it at the targets trying to aim your paint in the bulls-eyes. This not only works on fine motor skills needed to work the syringe but it also works on focus and targeting as well.
The boys really got into this! I love the shot above where you can actually see the red paint coming out of the syringe and landing onto the paper. My oldest really got into it and tried several different positions to get a better shot. 
Once each of the boys had hit all of their targets they swapped colors of paint and did it again! Surprisingly, as messy as it looks, the boys really didn’t get any paint on them at all!! We specifically used washable paints, however, just in case!
WHOO!! Pretty awesome huh? I have never seen this activity done anywhere but I SURE would have loved doing this as a kid!! We just tacked our paper up onto our old oak tree in the backyard knowing the paint will wash right off in the next rain. What do you think? Would your kids love doing something like this? Not only is it a BLAST – but your kids will have so much fun AND be working on key developmental skills at the same time!
What a great idea!!
Great idea!
Such a fun idea!
Looks like fun!
o.M.G this looks to fun!! thanks for sharing!