Developing strong fine motor skills is an important part of childhood growth, setting the foundation for writing, self-care, play, and everyday independence. Sensory toys are a great way to help children strengthen the small muscles in their hands and fingers while also supporting focus, coordination, and regulation. Whether you’re a parent, teacher, or therapist, the right tools can make practice feel more like play. We’ve rounded up 20 of the best sensory toys that encourage kids to pinch, squeeze, twist, and build those essential fine motor skills.
Hide Inside Thinking Putty offers a delightful search-and-find challenge in a big tin of crystal-clear putty. Choose from three fun themes: Sweet Treats, Emotions, or Animals. Each version contains hundreds of tiny themed pieces and a checklist of targets to find. Players stretch, squish, and squeeze the putty as they hunt for each item. It’s an engaging way to keep hands busy while boosting key developmental skills.
2. Threading Boards Activity Set
Encourage creativity and build essential skills with our Threading Boards Activity Set – a fun and engaging lacing toy designed to boost fine motor development in children! Perfect for home, classroom, or therapy settings, this versatile threading kit supports bilateral coordination, eye-hand coordination, pencil grasp, and more.
3. Jelly Blox Sensory Building Set
Jelly Blox are squishy, squeezy, jello-like sensory building blocks that kids can’t get enough of! This magical multisensory playset includes 20 wiggly, jiggly, double-thick rubbery blocks—each with a unique, irresistible filling. Inside you’ll discover tiny colored foam beads, kinetic sand, crunchy crackling beads, squashy foam, clear gel, and more.
Wikki Stix Rainbow Pack is twistable, playable, and endlessly creatable fun! These one-of-a-kind colorful sensory sticks bend, twist, and stick together with just a fingertip touch. You can press them down, peel them up, and reuse them again and again without mess or glue.
5. Bear Popper
Squeeze this cute little bear’s tummy and watch the balls go flying! This set includes a rubbery bear, 6 sturdy foam balls, and a net storage bag. Bear Poppers are a fun toys for working on hand and finger strength, building fine motor skills, promoting bilateral coordination. Safe, soft, foam flying fun!
Discover endless fidget fun with our Push & Peel Fidget Ball, a portable, hands-on sensory tool designed to keep fingers busy and minds calm. This engaging fidget features colorful, stretchy silicone strands that loop and weave around a sturdy plastic ball. Kids (and adults!) can push and tuck the strands into the ball’s grooves, then peel and pull them back out – over and over again.
7. Finger Skills Fastener Board
A wonderful Montessori-inspired Finger Skills Fastener Board for practicing zippers, snaps, lacing, and 4 variations of buckles! The Finger Skills Fastener Board features 7 different fasteners mounted on a thick, colorful foam board. This engaging pre-dressing skills toy helps children practice fastening while developing fine motor skills and hand strength.
This colorful, hands-on tong activity set is perfect for building early learning and fine motor skills. Kids can sort, match, count, and pattern the 60 slightly weighted, rubbery fruit pieces while working on tactile discrimination, color recognition, and pre-scissor skills. The included jumbo tweezers strengthen little hands, while the double-sided activity cards add playful learning challenges.
Discover the mega-tactile, one-of-a-kind feel of this powdery yet moldable sand! Kids and adults alike love how it’s soft to the touch, but still easy to shape, mold, and play with. In addition, sensory sand play helps build important foundational skills. It supports sensory processing, tactile discrimination, fine motor skills, and visual perceptual development, all essential for school readiness.
To play, fidgeters push the colored balls inside the puzzle to the empty spot with the matching colored ring. As they do, they build fine motor skills, finger strength, bilateral coordination, motor planning, and problem-solving abilities. Because it’s portable and quiet, this engaging fidget ball works well as a therapy tool, stress reliever, or travel toy for car rides and waiting rooms.
The Silly Tongue Puffer Fish is a fun 2″ squeeze toy that sticks out its tongue and makes a satisfying click when squeezed. This engaging fine motor skill tool doubles as an alerting fidget and is perfect for teaching kids how to grade finger pressure.
Our Therapy Putty Charms™ are irresistible little 1″ shiny, colorful charms designed for hide-and-find play in therapy putty. These sturdy plastic pieces come in two adorable assortments (zoo animals or sea creatures), making therapy exercises fun and engaging for kids.
Perfect for developing fine motor skills, finger strength, pincer grasp, and bilateral coordination, the charms can be purchased in 15-piece or 55-piece sets, or as part of ready-to-go combo kits.
13. Suction Construction Building Set
You’ll love Suction Construction, a brain-boosting, finger-strengthening fine motor building set. This one-of-a-kind suction cup construction set develops bilateral coordination, fine motor, visual perceptual, and motor planning skills. It’s also a fascinating occupational therapy toy for providing deep pressure input to fingers while sorting and matching colors or shapes.
14. Snazzy Snappers™
Snazzy Snappers™ are a favorite fidget tool for relieving stress and easing anxiety. This rubbery, square-shaped fidget fits perfectly in the palm of your hand. Simply squeeze it, then release for a deeply satisfying “pop!” sensation that keeps fingers coming back for more.
Magnetic Thinking Putty is your favorite sensory putty with a magical twist! This big tin of shimmery, iridescent blue putty comes with a powerful magnet that brings it to life Here’s the fun part: charge the putty with the magnet to create mesmerizing waves, coils, and patterns. Meanwhile, you can still stretch, squish, smash, or simply knead it to relieve stress and keep busy hands engaged.
16. Super Tooobs
Super Toobs are colorful, bendable, stretchable, snappable plastic accordion tubes that encourage creative fun! Link, twist, and bend these pop tube fidget toys into infinite shapes for satisfying fidgeting, unique tooob art, or mega marble mazes. The sky’s the limit! Kids love the cool popping sound as the tubes are pulled apart or pushed together.
Yippee Tugger Fidgets™ are a wonderfully textured, rubbery “finger cage” fidget with six colorful, 8″ bendy strands you can pull, twist, and tug through two fiddle holes. Each strand has its own unique texture, resistance level, and end design. Some with finger loops, others with textured balls,and most make distinct sounds when manipulated.
18. TwirlyCogs Fine Motor Playset
TwirlyCogs is a colorful, interactive learning toy that delivers endless creative fun while building essential fine motor skills. This engaging playset helps develop visual-motor skills, finger strength, eye-hand coordination, problem solving, and motor planning—all through hands-on play.
19. PushPeel Fidget Sensory Board
Meet PushPeel, our favorite new sensory activity board that combines fine motor fun with stress-busting fidget play! Push the colorful silicone strands down into curvy grooved paths, or let your imagination run wild creating coils, loops, and curlicue designs. When you’re done, pick & peel the strands back out and start all over again!
These uniquely satisfying Squish & Squeeze Goo Mats are skill-building gel fidget mats filled with brightly colored goo that flows back and forth through a twisty, sealed path. Squeeze each side to push the goo from one end to the other, promoting finger strength, hand coordination, and calm focus along the way.
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