Kindergarten Orientation:
Fine Motor Skills
What fine motor skills does your child need in preparation for Kindergarten?
What are fine motor skills?
Fine motor skills involve the use of the smaller muscle of the hands, such as when buttoning, opening lunch boxes, or using pencils or scissors. Fine motor skill efficiency significantly influences the quality of the task outcome as well as the speed of task performance. Efficient fine motor skills require a number of independent skills to occur simultaneously to appropriately manipulate the object or perform the task.
What should I focus on to help my child improve their fine motor skills?
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Hand dominance: Determine which is the dominant hand and reinforce its more frequent use in precision task performance.
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Bilateral Integration: Practice using both hands to perform tasks, not just one (e.g. use the ‘doing hand’ to place the block and the ‘helping’ hand to hold the block construction steady).
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Finger Isolation: Practice tasks that use just one or two fingers – not all the fingers at once (e.g. ‘poking’ games).
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Hand and Finger Strength: Enhance finger strength by using pegs and/or clips in play.
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Experience: Encourage enjoyment in activity participation instead of focusing on a ‘successful’ outcome (e.g. rewarding pencil to paper attempts, not whether the drawing actually looks like a car or a house).
What activities can be done to improve fine motor skills?
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Threading and lacing: with a variety of sized laces and beads.
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Tongs or teabag squeezers: to pick up objects (e.g. put marbles down a marble maze).
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Manipulation games: such as ‘Pick up Sticks’ and ‘Connect 4’.
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Play-doh: Using the fingers, not the hands as whole; working with the Play-doh up in the air, not flat on the table.
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Construction: that requires pushing and pulling with fingers (e.g. ‘Mobilo’, ‘K’nex’ or ‘Lego’).
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Storing construction materials in jars with screw lids that need to be opened and closed as the materials are needed and when packed away.
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Craft: Make things using old boxes, egg cartons, wool, paper and sticky or masking tape.
Click on the image to the right to access 30 activities to develop fine motor skills!
