Last week, we discussed the different components of fine motor skills and how they all work together in a complex way to enable your child’s hands to manipulate different objects (pencils, cutlery and scissors), and help them engage in play(play dough, arts and crafts and legos) and self care (dressing with buttons, zips and belts).
Fine motor skills rely on a foundation of gross motor skills which includes trunk stability, shoulder stability and strength in the upper arms. The stronger the foundation, the easier it will be for your child to master their fine motor skills. Under each section below, there are some activities to help improve your child’s fine motor skills. These activities are easy to set up, requires little to no preparation and it gives you a sneak peak of what we do in our therapy sessions!
1) The ability to use both hands (bilateral integration
Using scissors
Sticker play
Tearing tissue paper to make a collage
2) Having sufficient trunk control, shoulder stability and hand strength.
Filling a spray bottle with water
Moulding play dough
Walking like an animal (bear walk, crab walk and inchworm walk)
Painting
3) Well-developed arches of the hand
Scrunching newspaper into balls and throwing it at a target
Play dough (rolling into snakes and balls)
Cupping a dice when playing board games
4) The ability to isolate fingers
Popping bubbles with one finger
Tracing letters in sand or shaving foam
Finger painting
5) Forearm rotation
Pouring
Scooping
Coin flipping
One particular fine motor activity that your kids will love iscalled Spaghetti Spiders and it was inspired by Imagination Tree.
This all-in-one activity targets:
Fine motor skills (bilateral integration, arches of the hand, finger isolation and pincer grasp)
Number concepts(number formations, identifying numbers and counting)
Sequencing (following colourpatterns)
What do you need:
Play-dough
Dry spaghetti
Beads of all shapes and sizing
Cards
Crayons or markers
Sandpaper (optional)
OT TIP: use chalk or broken crayons to encourage a proper pencil grasp
Set-up:
If your child is able to, let them write or let them copy the numbers that you written on cardboard to practice proper number formation. Place the paper or cardboard on top of the sandpaper when letting your child write numbers.
Let your child roll balls of play dough to make the body of the spider (develop the arches of the hand).
The next step is for them to stick the dry spaghetti into the balls of play dough. Make sure that they are using the pincer grasp (squeezing the noodle between the thumb and index finger while the last three fingers are tucked away to develop the correct pencil grasp).
Put the beads next to the spiders and put the card with numbers in the spider body and the game can start. The child must thread the same number of beads through the noodles.
You can add sequencing by telling them the order of colours that the beads need to go through the noodles.
OT TIP: using sandpaper provides sensory feedback to improve number formations
OT TIP: tuck a marble or pom-pom behind the three fingers for better stabilization and isolation of fingers
How to upgrade Spaghetti Spiders:
Use a dice (to encourage pronation of the forearm) and the child must add or subtract that number before threading the beads.
Let them come up with their own pattern idea to encourage creativity.
We hope you enjoyed our series about fine motor skills! Tune in next week to find out about crossing the midline and the different activities you can do!
Have a great week 😀
written by Zareen Abrahams
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