Using a Spoon: 5 Awesome Activities to Help Your Kid Learn!

An important early fine motor milestone that children develop is the ability to feed themselves with utensils. Toddlers typically start using a spoon for eating between the ages of 10-12 months (CDC). A child will continue to develop towards increasingly effective use of a wide variety of eating utensils for self feeding as they get older.

What to do when your kid is not using a spoon or a fork?

Does this sound familiar?

• Your kid is older than 2 years old and you’re still saying, “use your spoon”.  
• You hand them a spoon.  They hold it in one hand and use the other hand to feed himself?
• They stuff food into their mouth with their hands
• They expect you to feed them…you do.
• Every time you hand them a spoon they drop it.

In order to use utensils when eating, a person needs to develop hand and wrist strength, control and coordination. Exposure to utensils during mealtime is a good way to support your child’s development of the fine motor skills necessary for self-feeding. The motor skills necessary for using a spoon are associated with those needed for other types of tool use. Examples include: cutting with scissors and drawing with a crayon. Consistently modeling the use of utensils and offering spoons, forks, chopsticks and an open cup during mealtime is vital to your child developing the skills necessary to use them effectively. 

In addition to practicing utensil use at mealtime, there are a wide variety of play activities that can support development of fine motor skills for utensil and tool use. Here are a few activities ideas to offer your toddler or preschooler to promote these skills:

Sensory Play

Include a variety of scooping and pouring tools into a sensory play activity. Try pouring water from drinking cups, scooping dried beans with a spoon or spreading shaving cream with a spatula.

Play Dough Tools

Offer a variety of sculpting tools and utensils when playing with playdough that offers a little physical resistance. Try poking with a fork, cutting with a child safe knife, smashing with a potato masher and more.

Play Kitchen

Play kitchens are a natural way for children to practice using a spoon and imitate the utensil skills they see modeled outside of mealtimes. During imaginative play activities with dolls/stuffies or in a play kitchen, offer materials such as spatulas, whisks, tongs, mixing spoons.

Kitchen Tongs

Kitchen tongs are an excellent fine motor tool that can be incorporated into a wide range of activities. Use tongs to sort pom poms, include them in a sensory bin and have them available in the play kitchen.

Hammering

Hammering is a great tool to strengthen wrists and hands. There are many developmentally appropriate hammering toys available for babies and toddlers that involve hammering wooden pegs into holes or balls into shoots with a toy mallet. For older children, try using a block or toy mallet to push golf tees into a piece of styrofoam or cardboard.

If you are concerned about your child’s self feeding skills and other fine motor skill development, they may benefit from occupational therapy services to support them in meeting these important developmental milestones. Check out this blog post for additional tips if you have concerns that your child is not meeting milestones!