Building fine-motor skills is the steppingstone that allows students to write neatly, and then after much practice, write fluent and meaningful text without thinking about the letter formation part of writing.
More children today lack fine-motor skills
Within the past 15 years or so many students lack fine-motor skills. Many students enter school without being able to hold scissors or a pencil properly. Additionally, many struggle to button, zip, or squeeze very well. This has happened since the launch of the technological age and having more phones, iPad, and other devices that don’t engage the fine motor muscles.
These things keep our kids occupied and they are not engaging the smaller muscles. By not using their hands as much, many children do not have the proper hand strength to have neat handwriting and to form the lines properly.
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Now don’t get me wrong!
Electronics are not a bad thing.
It just means we have to be more intentional in providing the right resources and opportunity for our child(ren) to build these fine-motor skills.
Fortunately, there are so many day-to-day things we can allow our child to do to build these fine-motor skills. We just have to be aware and give our children the opportunity to use them. And give them some time to struggle…. sometimes they just need a few more seconds/minutes and they can get it.
Why Children need to Develop Fine-Motor Skills
With weak fine-motor muscles, children are not able to have the control in their hands that they need to be able to write or do other day to day tasks. On the contrary, students who have had lots of opportunities to do activities which target the fine-motor muscles are able to do things more independently. For example, they can zip zippers, button shirt, build with Legos, open fruit snacks, peel an orange etc.
Above all, remember you know your child best. You know what they can and cannot do. My suggestion is to give them a slight challenge.
For example, let’s see if you can do the pincer grasp (picking up small objects with your thumb, pointer finger, and middle finger/tallest finger) with three of the beads. This will help them focus on proper formation, but in a doable way.
Always, always praise your child for full attention to the task and best effort. As a result, this will help your child when they enter into formal learning. It also shows them that practice makes progress, not perfection.
13 Fun Fine-Motor Activities
Now let’s talk about practical ways that you can help your child build his or her fine-motor skills.
To let you know some of the ideas, I have included links to the resources I have found useful.
- Turning a page in a book
- Putting together puzzles
- Using tongs to transfer small objects
- Using stickers (I love finding reusable sticker books!)
- Put beads on a pipe cleaner
- Threading Sewing cards
- Playing with Legos (start out with bigger ones then get smaller.)
- Draw pictures (it is okay if it is scribbles)
- Play with playdough
- Open and close containers
- Sort coins
- Glue pom poms (encourage pincer grasp)
- Scoop objects from one container to another container
Summary
In our current place in time, we have to be more intentional in giving our young children the activities and tasks that allow them to build the muscles in their hands. Thankfully, there are many activities you can do with things around the house, or you can purchase some games and manipulatives. Oh, and you know what? These can make great birthday and Christmas presents!
In the comments below, let me know which fine-motor activities you like to do. And let me know if you have any questions about how we can better support your child. 😊
Next week we will be discussing pre-writing activities that you can do with your child, so once it is time to start to write letters, they have the skills to do it.
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