Fine Motor Skills for Kindergarten

Unrefined grasp pattern, poor shoulder stability- child is not resting his forearm on the desk top.

In the past few years, the number of kindergarten referrals that the OTs in my department and I have received has dramatically increased.  The majority (if not all) of the kids who are referred have unrefined grasp patterns for holding a marker, crayon or pencil, and a good amount of them have never really even held a scissors.  In addition, they often are not resting their forearms on the table top during paper/pencil tasks, they exhibit poor posture at their desks, and they have upper extremity/hand weakness.  Why?  Kids just aren't getting the outside play time or the chance to develop the motor skills that are needed to have good fine motor skills.  The following article talks about how kids are entering school without the necessary fine motor skills that they need:

http://lancasteronline.com/features/trending/losing-our-grip-more-students-entering-school-without-fine-motor/article_c0f235d0-7ba2-11e5-bf0d-5745f74f9717.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=user-share

Here are some tasks that can improve the skills needed for fine motor skills in the kindergarten classroom:

First and foremost:

• increase core stability (strengthen core muscles)-  kids need strong core muscles for stability for sitting in a chair and and for giving their arm/hand the stability it needs for distal work (using their hands and fingers, such as for coloring and printing)
• increase stability in the shoulder girdle/shoulder joint-  have kids do lots of weight bearing through and resistive activity with their upper extremities.  Crawling, pulling, pushing, activities on hands and knees, climbing and pulling themselves up on playground equipment, laying on their tummy on the floor while coloring so that they are propped up on and weight bearing through elbows
• increase upper extremity and hand strength- resistive activities as mentioned above, playdough/theraputty  http://fabulousfriendsot.blogspot.com/2013/10/weak-little-hands.html
• http://fabulousfriendsot.blogspot.com/2013/06/postural-control-and-shoulder-stability.html  Check out the above activities for core and shoulder strengthening from a previous post

Kids need a GOOD foundation of the above so that their fine motor skills can progress.

Work toward improving the following skills:

• in hand manipulation skills- here are some activities from a previous post  http://fabulousfriendsot.blogspot.com/2013/10/in-hand-manipulation-skills.html
• wrist stability and developing hand arches- check out this previous post for task ideas http://fabulousfriendsot.blogspot.com/2013/06/wrist-stability-and-hand-arches.html
• thumb opposition and separation of function of the 2 sides of the hand-  http://fabulousfriendsot.blogspot.com/2013/07/thumb-oppositionopen-webspace-and.html
• grasp patterns/finger tip prehension skills-  reaching and placing tasks (various size peg tasks), stringing various size beads, playing with manipulatives picking up items with different tongs/tweezers, drawing and printing with a small piece of chalk or short/broken crayons to encourage a refined grasp pattern