Something For Those That Don't Like Fine Motor Tasks...

This is what one of my little preschool students and I did today:

He really is not fond of any paper/pencil tasks.  Not.at.all.  He does everything he can to avoid markers, crayons and scissors at all costs.  However, today his favorite distractions were "missing" from the room, so I had his attention a bit more than usual.  And, I had to get creative to keep him attentive and make things at least a bit interesting.  So, we started with scented markers.  Who doesn't love scented markers?

$3.49 at Staples

Of course we had to spend a bit of time smelling each one, which often means marker under the nose or on the lips.  We talked about and I showed him how to correctly hold the marker because that is something that he is working on for his IEP.  He started to draw a person on his own piece of paper, so I made a face on mine, which turned into a sun at his request.  We worked on drawing pre writing lines by putting rays on the sun (imitation or copying pre writing lines is also an objective that he is working on).  I had him work on filling in an area to color by coloring the sun yellow. We worked on drawing more vertical lines by making "grass" (mine is the green, his are the pink lines).  At this point I was losing him, so I started to draw things and he guessed what I was drawing (flowers, butterflies, etc).  He then took his marker and had some of the bugs "fly" to the flowers (which addresses drawing a line from one point to another on paper, which is often a skill required for worksheet completion).  Okay, that was all he could tolerate, so we had to then move on to some type of movement activity.  It may not be exactly what I wanted or how I wanted to originally go about it, but, I just wanted to illustrate to parents/caregivers that even though your child does not "like" fine motor tasks, you can accomplish some objectives by adding some fun, creative media and by letting them think that they are doing exactly what THEY want to do.  Any productive work is better than a flat out refusal.  And, my little friend was very happy with "our" picture.