Fine Motor Skills, Help for School and Kindy
Helping Children Develop Fine Motor Skills in a Digital World
Helping Children Develop Fine Motor Skills in a Digital World
It’s so important for children to develop fine motor skills, but in the digital era, it’s less likely that children get much practice in their typical day.
I think that’s why I see so many parents of 2nd and 3rd graders who are really struggling academically because of handwriting issues – getting tired, not being able to finish tests and assignments, etc.
I hate hearing myself even say this, but in my day, if I wanted to send a note to a classmate, I had to write a message on a scrap of paper and pass it discreetly behind the teacher’s back.
Nowadays, students can tap their message in a phone text using one or two fingers. As 21st century parents, we have to wonder, what skills are our tech-savvy kids missing out on as they trade handwriting and chalkboards for texting, tapping, and swiping?
Are fine motor skills like handwriting still relevant? What do we do to encourage effective fine motor skills development?
How 21st Century Lifestyle Interferes with the Need to Develop Fine Motor Skills
The most obvious change from past generations is that schools spend much less time devoted to handwriting instruction than before.
Today’s students get about a quarter of the penmanship practice that their parents received. Almost half of the population isn’t learning cursive at all, either.
De-emphasizing penmanship means less time working on those preliminary fine motor skills, too. But that’s not the only lifestyle change that 21st century children are raised with that interfere with the need to develop fine motor skills.
Touch screens require very little pressure and only one finger use.
Tablets have taken over as the go-to learning activity for young children. With millions of free games like letter-tracing and read-aloud storytimes, tablets offer easy way for parents to encourage little learners. But, there is no fine motor skill development happening with a single-finger trace or tap. Tablets take very little finger pressure to activate, so children get accustomed to using very little effort to make their favourite game progress.
Even for older children
video games are more often played on tablets than using video game controllers with buttons and triggers to manipulate.
Preschoolers and kindergarteners use more dry-erase markers than crayons and pencils.
Teachers are more environmentally and cost-conscious than ever, opting for a re-usable dry-erase marker with laminated letter-tracing pages instead of single-use pages for use with a crayon or marker. Dry-erase markers require much less pressure to make their mark, so children’s hands aren’t getting the same level of strengthening practice.
I’ve also noticed that
many early education classes let children use markers more than pencil or crayon – which also require less pressure than pencils and crayons.
These days, I rarely see a child under 6 wearing shoes with lace ties.
Parents understandably prefer Velcro and elastic shoes that simplify the morning routine and reduce trip hazards. But that’s just one more area in the daily routine that doesn’t emphasize fine motor development over time.
Developmental Milestones: Why is Fine and Gross Motor Skills Important
Voice command!
One of our CoordiKids team members was telling us about how her son has already figured out how to use the Voice Command option on the television remote. And he’s only 5! No need to mash remote control buttons to find his favourite show! That made me wonder how many other children are taking advantage of voice command features to skip the tedious task of punching buttons on computers, tablets, TVs and games?
Developmental Milestones: Why is Fine and Gross Motor Skills ImportantObservations from a teacher: The worst thing for me to see is that more and more children have writing accommodations, when simply a good foundation in basic handwriting throughout elementary school would have served him/her better in preparing and training for the more rigorous academics in the upper grade levels.– Secondary Teacher, Texas
With So Many Modern Accommodations, Why is It Still So Important to Develop Fine Motor Skills?
- Fine motor skills directly impact a child’s ability to care for him or herself:
- Fastening clothing
- Brushing teeth
- Combing hair
- Unlatching a lunch box
- Opening food packaging
- Opening lids from bottles and jars
- Tying shoes
- Cooking
- Children need to be dexterous enough to button clothing while getting dressed or unbuttoning clothing for toileting needs.
- How effectively young children develop fine motor skills directly correlates to their handwriting skills later on. And handwriting is still a critical life skill, as well as being used for notetaking in upper academics and testing in all ages.
- It affects the way our brains develop. Writing letters, cursive writing, and typing on a keyboard are all associated with distinct and separate brain patterns.
- Children with better handwriting showed stronger working memory, reading, and writing. This was demonstrated scientifically by watching different areas of the brain activate when different children were given different types of activities.
- Preschoolers who practice handwriting have been shown to be better readers in elementary school.
- The neural pathways for motor coordination, vision, and memory are all linked together with those used in handwriting.
- It affects their ability to pursue passions like arts, crafts, LEGO or engineering hobbies, science experiments, cooking, playing musical instruments, etc. All of these require fine motor skills.
So, it’s important for all children to develop fine motor skills. Optimal neurological development depends on it. Their self-care routines depend on it.Their academic success depends on it. And all of those things create a tumbling-down effect on their self-esteem, confidence, and social well-roundedness.
Did You Know? There are Prerequisite Developmental Skills That Lead to Effective Fine Motor Skills
During early childhood development, a baby develops the important sensory phase and sensory motor phase.These phases form the foundation, and other gross and fine motor skills development can only take place properly after the foundation is in place.(After the sensory and sensory motor phases of development come the perceptual-motor development and cognitive development is built on this.) So, what are the developmental prerequisites for effective fine motor skills?
- Take Our Free Sensory Motor Skill QuizReflexive grasp (at birth)
- Global ineffective reach for objects (3 months)
- Voluntary grasp (3 months)
- 2 handed palmar grasp (3 months)
- 1 handed palmar grasp (5 months)
- Controlled reach (6 months)
- Controlled release of objects
- Pincer grasp
- Transfers object from one hand to the other
- Drops and picks up toy
- Turning pages of a book
- Scribbling
- Turning knobs
- Drawing with whole arm movement, shifts hands, makes strokes
- Squeezing
- Various manipulations of clay/dough
- Handedness / Hand dominance
- Using the non-dominant hand to assist & stabilize paper
- Individual finger strength
- Isolating hand/wrist/elbow movement from shoulder movement
- Pre-writing skills (including drawing: l, —, o, +, /,square, , X, and Δ)
- Mental planning and sequencing
- Posture & core stabilisation
- Holds and drinks from cup independently
- Using scissors
- Evolution of drawing grip from whole fist to 3-finger grasp, to mature pencil/crayon grip
CoordiKids Home Course video exercises include fine motor practice and strengthening activities done at home: Click here for a free trial:
(If you’d like more personalized discussion and a tailored strategy for your child’s needs, book a virtual consultation)
What if I Notice My Child Struggling to Develop the Fine Motor Skills Prerequisites?
Because the neuropathways of the brain are so inter-connected between motor skills development and other developmental areas, it is important to take note if your child is not progressing to develop fine motor skills prerequisites.
Your child may just need extra motivation to develop fine motor skills to progress properly to the next level. Clumsy fine motor skills could be a symptom of another developmental issue, such as:
- Dysgraphia
- Dyspraxia
- Developmental Coordination Disorder
- Sensory Processing Disorder
- ADHD/ADD
Therapeutic intervention from a professional, like a paediatric occupational therapist, can help bridge gaps in your child’s natural developmental progression.This could be critical for your child’s future success in learning proper handwriting, avoiding him or her becoming disengaged in school from learning difficulties and social challenges that come with being labelled “difficult” or “lazy” simply because of their clumsy motor skills impede daily function.Intervention could include using the CoordiKids Home Course to let your child follow 15 minutes of exercises per day to boost development. It could also include traditional in-office occupational therapy.If you’re unsure of whether your child might need extra help to develop fine motor skills effectively, you can contact Marga Grey, MScOT for a private consultation.
Click here to watch the Q&A replay References: Early development of language by hand: composing, reading, listening, and speaking connections; three letter-writing modes; and fast mapping in spelling.Virginia W Berninger 1, Robert D Abbott, Janine Jones, Beverly J Wolf, Laura Gould, Marci Anderson-Youngstrom, Shirley Shimada, Kenn Apel, Developmental Neuropsychology 2006 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16390289/
Pingback: Questions from Parents on How to Develop Fine Motor Skills: a Q&A
Pingback: How to Improve Handwriting for Kids and Fine Motor Skills - CoordiKids
Pingback: How to Improve Handwriting for Kids and Fine Motor Skills - CoordiKids
Pingback: About CoordiKids
Pingback: Is Clumsiness a Sign of ADHD?
Pingback: Dyspraxia Courses Online: Supporting Children and Adults