How to accelerate fine motor skill development among children?

Fine motor activities are essential to help your child develop the skills needed for good handwriting. Parents can help the kids in development of fine motor skills  by adopting activities which can engage your child for hours and while having fun.

Fine motor activities encourage the development of eye-hand coordination and help children practice the skills required to handle or manipulate small objects with their fingers. Appropriate materials for fine motor activities for infants and toddlers are those that generally match their developing skill levels and are challenging.

Fine Motor Activities to accelerate fine motor skill development:   

• Play dough is an amazing activities which kids enjoy the most and it helps in development of eye and hand co-ordination. Molding and rolling play dough into balls - using the palms of the hands facing each other and with fingers curled slightly towards the palm. Rolling play dough into tiny balls (peas) using only the finger tips. 
• Using pegs or toothpicks to make designs in play dough. 
• Cutting play dough with a plastic knife or with a pizza wheel by holding the implement in a diagonal valor grasp. 
• Tearing newspaper into strips and then crumpling them into balls. 
• Use to stuff scarecrow or other art creation. Scrunching up 1 sheet of newspaper in one hand. This is a super strength builder. 
• Using a plant sprayer to spray plants, (indoors, outdoors) to spray snow (mix food coloring with water so that the snow can be painted), or melt "monsters". (Draw monster pictures with markers and the colors will run when sprayed.) 
• Picking up objects using large tweezers such as those found in the "Bedbugs" game. This can be adapted by picking up Cheerios, small cubes, small marshmallows, pennies, etc., in counting games. 
• Shaking dice by cupping the hands together, forming an empty air space between the palms. 
• Lacing and sewing activities such as stringing beads, Cheerios, macaroni, etc. 
• Using eye droppers to "pick up" colored water for color mixing or to make artistic designs on paper. 
• Rolling small balls out of tissue paper, then gluing the balls onto construction paper to form pictures or designs. 
• Turning over cards, coins, checkers, or buttons, without bringing them to the edge of the table. 
• Making pictures using stickers or self-sticking paper reinforcements. 
• Playing games with the "puppet fingers" -the thumb, index, and middle fingers. At circle time have each child's puppet fingers tell about what happened over the weekend, or use them in songs and finger plays.

More activities to accelerate fine motor skill development:

Most fine motor activities require children to move their hands and fingers in unfamiliar ways. The best starting place for accelerating your child’s fine motor development is to help him strengthen his pincer grip.

Consider investing in some low-cost beads of different sizes, where the largest is approximately 1 inch in diameter and the smallest bead is approximately 1/4 inch in diameter. Using a rigid cord (a pipe cleaner works well), have your child use his thumb and pointer finger to pick up a large bead and thread it on the cord. As your child gains comfort with this activity, gradually introduce smaller and smaller beads which are more challenging to hold and manipulate. 

After your child is able to easily thread the smallest beads on the rigid cord, replace the rigid cord with a floppy shoe lace or string. This floppy lace will provide your child with a “moving target” as he tries to thread the bead with his dominant hand and steady the cord with his non-dominant hand.

For older children who are already comfortable with the proper pincer grip, focus on helping your child gain a strong pencil and scissors grip. As a starting point, print some printable tracing worksheets and direct your child to trace over the lines, curves and shapes. Or, to make homemade worksheets, use a yellow marker to draw the shape and then have your child trace your lines with a blue or red marker to see the shape magically turn a different color. Tracing not only requires a strong pencil grip to hold the pencil or marker, but it also requires strong coordination of the muscles in the hand to stay on the narrow line while tracing.

After your child finishes tracing, have him use scissors to cut out the shape. Begin with simple lines and curves and then move to basic shapes, such as circles or ovals, and then to more difficult shapes such as triangles, squares, and other multi-sided shapes.

Related: www.schoolsparks.com


Useful links:

* Supporting Young Children's Motor Skill Development.

 * Activities to promote fine motor skills

* Why Proper Development of fine motor Skills is Important?

* Fine Motor Skills for Infants, Toddlers, and Children

What Are the Signs of Weak Fine Motor Skills?

Fine motor skills can be defined as small muscle movements: those that occur in the finger, in coordination with the eyes. Learning fine motor skills is similar to learning other skills.

Motor skills are actions that involve the movement of muscles in the body. They are divided into two groups: gross motor skills , which include the larger movements of arms, legs, feet, or the entire body ( crawling , running, and jumping); and fine motor skills, which are smaller actions, such as grasping an object between the thumb and a finger or using the lips and tongue to taste objects. Both types of motor skills usually develop together, because many activities depend on the coordination of gross and fine motor skills.

Development of fine motor skills is important among kids because it will in turn help them to perform better academically and physically in later years. Fine motor skills involve the small muscles of the body that enable such functions as writing, grasping small objects, and fastening clothing.

Fine motor skills involve strength, fine motor control, and dexterity. Some children have great difficulty with fine motor skills. Basic things such as writing, picking up tiny objects or buttoning and zipping clothing can be a great challenge for them. If these skills are not addressed, a child with weak fine motor skills might have difficulty at school.

For some children, their hands do not seem to work together in the way that they should. This may lead to such frustration that they may resist activities that require them to coordinate all of the muscles and joints in their hands and fingers. As a result, they do not get to practise these skills correctly or develop the correct muscles. This in turn may affect the development of higher-level fine motor skills, such as writing. It is often at the stage when formal handwriting instruction has commenced that children are identified as having fine motor weakness.
Resultant commonly seen behaviours showing the signs of weak fine motor skills might include:

• Outright refusal to participate in an activity
• avoidance techniques (‘I need to get a drink of water’)
• anger outbursts (rip up paper/tantrums)
• sadness (crying)
• ‘defeatist’ behaviour (‘I’m no good, I can’t do this’).

Further, research suggests that children and adolescents with identified motor coordination weakness are at higher risk of experiencing anxiety and even depression associated with their perceived lack of competence in motor activities. Therefore, it is important for teachers and parents to be aware of the impact that fine motor skill performance, or a child’s perception of their own fine motor performance in relation to their peers, may have on the child’s overall behaviour in the classroom. Working to help children develop the best fine motor skills possible at a young age helps to set the stage for success in school and at home, and more so, contributes to them feeling good about themselves.

Signs of weak fine motor skills:
List of observable behaviors of children with fine-motor difficulties.

• Difficulty with writing; poor grasp leading to poor form, fluency, and frequent discomfort when writing.
• Difficulty controlling speed of movements leading to excessive speed and resultant untidy work, or work not being completed due to overly slow movements.
• Difficulty with precision grip and inaccurate release and therefore problems with games that involve placement of pieces; for example, dominoes.
• Difficulty with spatial relations leading to difficulties with design and copying.
• Tearing paper and/or breaking pencils due to force-control difficulties.
• Difficulty with learning to dress and undress.
• Preference for outdoor activities.
• Clumsiness and frustration: spills food; drops objects; breaks objects.
• Frustration towards and/or resistant behavior to manipulative and graphic tasks.
• Excessive muscular tension when performing fine-motor tasks.

My next post will be about activities which can help in development of fine motor skills.

Useful links:

* How to Improve a Child's Fine Motor Skills

* Fine-Motor Skill Development: Tips for Parents

* Developing Fine Motor Skills (pdf)

* Development of fine motor skills from early years

* Fine Motor Skills Games

* Children and their Fine Motor Skills Development

Why Proper Development of fine motor Skills is Important?

A motor skill is simply an action that involves your kids using his muscles. They are divided into two groups: gross motor skills and fine motor skills. Both types of motor skills usually develop together, because many activities depend on the coordination of gross and fine motor skills.

Gross and Fine motor skills have become an important parameter for assessing the development of the child. So it’s important to develop these skills in them which will in turn help them to perform better academically and physically too.

Gross motor skills involve the large muscles of the body involving physical movement of the child like running, jumping, hopping etc. These require balance and coordination skills.
Fine motor skills are the collective skills and activities that involve the small muscle movements using the hands, fingers with vision. 
Today we are learning about 'fine motor skills', and its importance. Moreover what tasks your kids can perform if he/she has developed fine motor skills properly.

Fine motor skills are the coordination of small muscle movements especially the coordination of finger movement with vision to perform precise and refinded movements. These skills are acquired as children, and humans secure and perfect them throughout life.