The Importance of Developing Fine Motor Skills
Have you ever stopped and wondered about how you have the ability to maneuver small objects in your hand without dropping it?
Or how you can hold a pencil with perfect three-point grips? What about cutting paper? Unfortunately, there are some kids and adults that cannot do these things.
Do you want to know why?
Why are Developing Fine Motor Skills Extremely Important?
Have you ever stopped and wondered about how you have the ability to maneuver small objects in your hand without dropping it?
Or how you can hold a pencil with perfect three-point grips? What about cutting paper? Unfortunately, there are some kids and adults that cannot do these things.
Do you want to know why?
In this article you will learn about:
- The definition and examples of motor skills
- The importance of developing motor skills
- How to develop fine motor skills
- Gross motor skills
A Summary of Fine Motor Skills
Fine motor skills can be defined as the ability to coordinate the small muscles of your hands and fingers.
For instance, cutting on a line, tracing a line, writing, buttoning clothes, or zipping pants.
Fine motor skills are important to the development of strong writing. Teacher and parents are struggling with the kids that have no strength in their hands to write. Parents sometimes think that teachers are not doing a great job on teaching their kids how to write, and teachers are struggling because kids are getting use to doing everything with the assistance of a device. Kids do a spectacular job with coloring on IPads and tablets just using their fingers and magically coloring the whole picture.
When at school, teachers give students a crayon and ask them to color, the students do not want to. This situation actually happened to me yesterday, and believe me it was not the first time. When we ask them to trace letters and numbers, they do not have the correct grip with the crayon.
Parents, we do not want a future generation of students who do not know how to write. Let’s make a commitment to build and strengthen fine motor skills in our kids, because fine motor skills are a crucial foundation.
Ways to develop fine motor skills
If you want to develop fine motor skills in your kids, the best way to do it is by giving him or her some lines to trace. Start with straight lines because when your kids start writing in school, they will start with the uppercase letters. Get the kids use to tracing lines from top to bottom, bottom to top, forward and backward from one point to another.
This simple exercise will strengthen their future writing skills.
As you see that your kid is developing the fine motor skills well, move on to diagonal lines repeating the same steps you did with straight lines, such as top to bottom, bottom to top. Moving forwards, have your kids start tracing the letters. The letters that have straight lines are E,F,H,I,K,L,M,N,T,X,Y and Z.
Another exercise that will strengthen your kid writing skills as he/she will learn how to do the moves necessary for a good writing.
After you see that your kid or kids are mastering straight and diagonal lines, you can move on to trace waved lines and also spaced lines. In writing, kids need to know to separate one word from another.
This simple activity will will help your students or kids build strength in their fine motor skills.
These preschool worksheets are a fine motor activity for preschoolers that are in Pre-K Special Education but can be also used for General Education students.One goal that is often common in an IEP for kids at this age is cutting.This activity comes with 20 pages of lines and circled shapes that can be used either for cutting or tracing.It also comes with numbers 0-20, the letters of the alphabet in uppercase and lowercase and shapes.
Fine Motor Outside Activities:
Materials needed:
– Paintbrush
– Buckets
– Water
Activity: The kids will draw on the ground with the water.
This activity is perfect for summer time. Kids enjoy playing with water and at the same time they will be strengthening their fine motor skills. Ask them to draw a picture, maybe a sun, a car, letters, numbers, or the first letter of their name.
Other activities/tips: practicing holding crayons/pencils, using pencil grips, searching for objects in putty, using chopsticks to grab small object, or tweezers to grab objects.
Creativity is key!
Gross Motor Skills
Gross motor are the activities that are done with the legs and feet. It is important that parents allow their kids to run. I have received kids at school at the gate that are five years old, and their parents are still carrying them. Kids need to learn to use their muscles to build strength and balance. Please, understand that I am not here to criticize your parenting, but to assist you in developing motor skills in your kid.
There are some simple steps to build gross motor skills in children. First, start by kicking a ball to your kid or kids. This is an activity that can be done in five or ten minutes each day, your kids’ muscles would develop tremendously. Second, teaching kids how to run. You might be thinking, “what” Sometimes kids will come into school and not know how to run or kick a ball. Gross motor skills are important because it allows the kids to play and not just sit out.
Gross Motor Activity
Material needed:
Fabric “I see you” tunnel.
Let your kid or student cross the tunnel back and fourth. As the kid crawls, he or she is learning to hold his/her weight at the same times. This also benefits strengthening the muscles in their hands.
I hope you found this article helpful!
Thank you,
Solange Vianna.
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