Fine motor skills are the small-muscle control behind every act of a hand: holding a spoon, doing up a button, threading a bead, turning a page, eventually holding a pencil. They build through use, not through instruction, and almost everything that builds them best is something a child would do anyway — tearing, pinching, pouring, squeezing, picking things up because they are small.
We do not rush a pencil into a hand that is not ready for one. The hand is built first, by a year of doing other things with it.