Searching for an engaging, purposeful and low-prep tabletop activity that will provide your students with the opportunity to develop their fine motor skills? Our Chop the Monkey’s Fruit resource is just what you need!

To prepare this task, simply print and cut the monkey task cards and provide child-safe cutting tools and play dough (yellow, green, red, orange and purple). Your students will love the challenge of flipping a card to see what kind of fruit the monkey likes to eat, making the fruit from play dough and chopping it up! Use this zoo animal-themed activity to help your students develop important fine motor skills, including hand and finger strength and bilateral coordination as they pinch, roll and shape the play dough into fruit shapes and cut it into pieces. In addition, we have included an opportunity for students to practise counting skills, including number recognition and one-to-one correspondence.

This hands-on resource includes detailed instructions with a list of required equipment and 24 monkey task cards (includes blank and numbered options) in high and low colour. Alternatively, use our editable Chop the Fruit: Monkey Cards document to add your own numbers in a font of your choice. We recommend printing on thick card for longevity.

As students complete this activity, we recommend making observations of how they engage with and complete the task, as this will help you to assess their fine motor development. For example, do they use both hands effectively together to roll and shape the play dough, are they able to control their hand movements to make shapes that resemble fruit, are their movements smooth and controlled, do they show a preference for using one hand when holding the cutting tool, and can they complete the task at a reasonable pace?

This engaging fine motor activity is a part of our Working at the Zoo: Fine Motor Skills Play Tray resource.