What do we understand by ‘fine motor skills’?

Fine motor skills refer to small muscles found in the fingers hands and arms that we use to manipulate, control tools and communicate through the written form. An important component of our fine motor skill development is our hand eye coordination where we use our vision to control the movement of small muscles.

The importance of well developed fine motor skills has impact on the efficiency of a child to complete a task, a child’s self esteem, their ability to complete work within a set time frame, a lack of ability to re- read work and disappointment in the quality of work they produce especially when comparisons are made on displayed work within the classroom.

The three main focuses of fine motor skills include grasping, manipulation and hand-eye coordination.

Children who are struggling in these areas may show awkward finger movements, limited use of finger tips, clumsy completion of movements, lack of interest and confidence in use of pencils, crayons, scissors, brushes etc., use of two hands displaying a lack of dominance and poor body posture.

Features of poor manipulation skills may be swapping hands rather than cross body activity, using the palm rather than fingers when playing with materials such as play dough, dropping materials such as beads when threading and inability to adjust pencil grip or manipulate scissors.

Hand eye coordination can result in poor copying skills, lack of accuracy in size and placement when producing pre-writing skills, avoidance of drawing and cutting activities and withdrawal from action songs, finger rhymes and participation in expressive poetry activities.

Suggested activities to increase skills –

Grasping

• making pastry
• using spring loaded pegs to help hang out the
• washing
• use of tweezers to pick up small beads and lego
• pieces for colour sorting

Manipulation

• use of keys and padlocks
• spinning tops
• tower building with small construction blocks
• turning objects – door knobs, taps etc
• paper folding

Hand eye coordination

• threading small objects like macaroni tubes, cut up straws, sewing cards
• plaiting
• pleating
• rolling play dough

Without well developed fine motor skills the impact on learning may show an in ability to complete a task or at times an unwillingness to commence or participate in an activity. Undeveloped skills may result in poor self esteem, an inability to complete tasks within set time frames and a general disinterest in re reading written work. Children may also avoid situations where they are encouraged to share their efforts within the class and may avoid tasks that involve these skills.

Katrina James – Learning Enhancement