Room 19 Nikki Jones

Fine Motor skills development

On Tuesday the 7th of February Room 19 had a fine motor skills development rotation. The rotation was set up in order to develop muscle strength in the hand in order for the children to have better control when using a pencil, scissors and other classroom equipment. Developing these skills will help with classroom activities such as writing, using computers, turning pages in a book when reading and many more.

We had four activities running throughout the afternoon which the children had a chance to complete. The class was divided into small groups so everyone was able to participate. 

The first activity was painting. The children were give a set of pallet paints along with glue, wool, buttons and squares of paper. Materials were left out, for available use however the students liked.

The second activity was using the play dough table. This is a great way to develop hand control as the children were rolling, squashing, poking and cutting the play dough. There were cookie cutters available which required the children to follow through a sequence of steps to get to their final product.

The third activity was craft. In craft the children made lollipops. They were each given a sheet of paper and a cardboard circle. First they drew around the circle twice, then cut out their two circles. They brushed glue onto the circle and placed their ice block stick half way in placing the second circle onto it and pressing them together. The children then decorated their lollipop however they liked using the art equipment such as glitter, felts and crayons. 

The fourth activity was threading beads. This required the students to use their hand eye coordination to get the string through a hole in the bead. I was impressed to see some of the children were already creating patterns with the beads.

All of the children were engaged in the activities and it was a very successful afternoon. We will be having another rotation in the coming weeks. If you have any materials at home that you think may be useful for these kind of activities then they would be greatly appreciated.

You can develop fine motor skills with your child at home. Some ideas are;

-Rolling dough when baking and using cookie cutters,

-Getting your child to put pegs on socks and pass them to you to help hang out the washing,

-Using kitchen utensils such as tongs,

-Doing puzzles,

-Using a lock and key,

-Unscrewing the lid off the peanut butter or marmite,

-Opening a container.

There are plenty of other examples of different activities to develop fine motor skills on the internet if you are interested in looking in to it. Research fine motor skills development and you should be able to find plenty of information.

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