Our top tips for fine motor skill development

Fine Motor Skills are the ability to control small precise movements with the fingers, wrists and hands. These skills are important for day to day activities in life. They also play a very important role in the school activities. A child's handwriting skills depend on the child's fine motor skills. There are lots of activities you can do to improve your child's fine motor skills.

A lot of activities are fun and also help in developing fine motor skills…..There are basically three kinds of activities which will help to develop your child's fine motor skills:

Grasping - example: using pencils, crayons, brushes etc
Manipulating - example: scissors, kneading, picking etc
Hand-eye co-ordination - example: writing, cutting, threading etc

Threading games are GREAT for fine motor skills

Here are a few activities that can improve your child's fine motor skills:

Playing with play-dough
Using scissorsto cut lots and lots of paper. Make sure the kids don't use the adult scissors but use the safety scissors.
Picking beads or other tiny objects using tweezers.
Finger painting
Stack objects - cards, coins, blocks etc
Connect the dot puzzles
Drawing and scribbling
Beading activities
Doing puzzles
Any activity which isolates finger activity - example playing a piano or typing
Kneading dough, mixing cake batter - get them to help with your cooking…

The best age to teach good handwriting skills to your children is between 3 and 10. Practicing handwriting can often be hard and boring for the child. Take it slow and do it the right way. Get them to practice the fine motor skills first and then move to the alphabets. Also make sure that the pencil grip is correct. 

Magnetic Tracing Mazes help promote important pre-writing skills.

Good posture is important and plays a key role in handwriting skills. Bad posture creates stress on young spines. Here are some tips to get that perfect posture for your child:  

Make sure your child has her own table and chair for writing purposes (height has to be adjusted as per the child's height). 
Feet have to be flat on the floor or on a foot rest.  
The child's back has to be supported by chair.
The child's bottom has to be pushed into the back pocket of his/her chair.
Head has to balanced on top of shoulders - should not tilt sideways or lean forwards.
Its not good to have too much strain on their shoulders (bending too much sideways to write)

One general tip when they are walking is -  A lowered chin means your neck muscles are carrying the weight and the strain will flow right down the neck and down the back. So no slouching….

Here are some tips for right posture when your child is working on the computer:
The computer monitor has to be at the child's eye level. Otherwise they will strain their necks. Above eye level is not good at all.  The keyboard and mouse have to be slightly lower than a writing desk so that the shoulders can be relaxed.

For toys & resources to encourage fine motor skill development click HERE