Any good games, finger plays, etc for developing these? I've copied a lot of cutting and tracing worksheets, but I'd like some other ideas that can be worked into "non-school" hours. Gs was just hopping on one foot out to kitchen and it got me thinking that there must be a myriad of things to work into just moving around the house.... I know you gals and guys will have tons of good suggestions!
Play doh! Lacing! Putting small beads (pom poms, buttons) into small containers- you can use fingers or a pair of tweezers
My boys are twins and one can cut better than me and the other would rather eat dirt than cut anything. I gave up on the cutting worksheets because he would get so upset. I bought beads and shoe laces and have him add the beads. I also went to a teachers store and bought zoo themed cards with the holes all around(not sure what they are called)and it came with laces. He loves animals and enjoys laces the cards. I am not sure of the age of Gs, but I have seen an improvement with Ryan playing with the small Legos. I also bought a ton of stickers and we do math problems with the stickers. I make him peel the stickers off which helps those little hands to move. Just a few ideas......hope this helps!
One idea I found was doing simple board games using tweezers to move your place marker. You can use "kid sized" tweezers or adult ones, you just have to find or make place markers that will work for the size of tweezers. It depends on how old your child is too.
My gs is age 4 1/2. He is so advanced in reading - already putting letters together (we started on 100 easy lessons this week), but he just can't get the writing. He even has trouble doing the straight lines between dots in dot-to-dots. Thanks for the ideas! I'll work some of them into the routine.
I second the playdough. I had a ps teacher tell me that vid games are also good for fine motor. I'm not kidding-that's really what she said. Boys in general mature their find motor skills much more slowly than girls, I think.
I used to tutor a kid that had similar issues Countrygal. In K, he could read and do gr 1 math, but printing was impossible!!! An OT told us to work on some real simple pencil and paper activities while on the waitlist to see if he needed "real" intervention. We made a lot of progress ourselves! Activity 1: Use a bingo dabber to make dots on a paper and have child connect the dots. (Any line that touches two dots but doesn't go past them, is what you are looking for) You can start simple and then end up using the dots to make shapes, and child does the connecting. If he has trouble pressing hard enough with a pencil, then start with felt markers. (After he gets good at it you can draw smaller dots with markers, but give him lots of time for success so that he can learn not to hate using markers!) Activity 2: Try cutting "straight lines" on index cards. Draw a 1/2 inch thick line with a black marker and aim to stay on the line. Slowly decrease the size of line once he's having success. Activity 3: Draw simple shapes. Put a dot at the top of the page and have him draw a circle. (lots of encouragement, and do this after you have had some success with lines) next easiest shape is triangle, then square. Start big! Full or half page size depending on skill level. Those are a few that I can remember anyway. Hope that gives you some ideas!
Thanks again everyone! I'm going to try quite a few of them! It's nice to know I'm not the only one who's been here!
