Fine Motor Skills and Writing Workshop October 2015

What we will be looking at today? The difference between Gross Motor Skills and Fine Motor Skills What is the importance of fine motor skills Movements of the body and their importance Activities to support these movements and skills Dough Gym Emergent Writing

Gross Motor skills and Fine Motor skills Gross motor skills are the bigger movements — such as rolling over and sitting — that use the large muscles in the arms, legs, torso, and feet. Fine motor skills are small movements — such as picking up small objects and holding a spoon — that use the small muscles of the fingers, toes, wrists, lips, and tongue. Gross motor skills enable your child to perform important everyday tasks, such as getting out of bed and going downstairs for breakfast, fine motor abilities allow for increasing independence in smaller but equally significant matters: opening doors, zipping zippers, brushing teeth, washing hands, and so on.

What is the importance of fine motor skills? Fine motor skills are small, precise, coordinated movements, which are essential in the development of pencil grip for writing. Research shows that emphasis on purely intellectual activities -- memorization of letters and numbers, for instance -- is far less useful at this stage than pursuits that encourage fine motor abilities and hand-eye coordination. These skills -- rather than counting or reciting the alphabet -- lay the foundation for academic learning in later years. In order to learn to write or draw, for example, a child's hand must be strong and coordinated enough to hold a pencil steady for a long period of time; in order to participate in school sports, games, and projects, dexterity and coordination must be up to par.

Different Movements involved in Fine Motor and Gross Motor activities Don't be alarmed if fine motor skills progress more slowly than gross motor development. Fine motor skills develop more slowly because the kinds of delicate movements that enable children to manipulate objects (stacking and nesting blocks or putting together puzzle pieces, for example) can be learned only over time with a lot of practice. Unfortunately, while most 3- year-olds will run happily for hours outside (and inside), few really have the patience to sit for a sustained period of time coping a drawing of a circle or completing tasks over and over to perfect them. Keep in mind that the smaller muscles of the body (like those in the hands and fingers) tire out more easily than the larger muscles in the arms and legs, so endurance and strength must be built up gradually before your child's dexterity can improve.

Different movements involved linking to pencil grasp. How children use their body to aid their early mark making and then writing is by using a sequence of muscle movements sequence of muscle movements. Which muscles they use depends on which stage of development they are at. Activity Can you put these pencil grasps in order from starting grasp to end grasp? Discuss your reasoning's.

Palmer Grasp This grasp is formed by wrapping the fingers around the object and making a fist with the object held in the middle. It is the grip that children most commonly employ in early mark making. The main movements used during this time are shoulder pivots and elbow pivots. The wrist tends not to move.

Digital Pronate As the pivot moves to the wrist, the elbow often tucks into the side of the body and the shoulder movement becomes minimal. Often with a wrist pivot comes a change in a child’s grip from palmer grasp to digital pronate. (digit meaning finger and pronate meaning to grasp with the palm turned down).

Once the pivots have worked their way down to the wrist the journey doesn’t stop there; although for lots of children it becomes far trickier. This is where children often get stuck. The end of the ‘pivot’ journey will be when we get their mark making movements to the very last, smallest set of pivots, right at the end of the fingers. If we can hold our mark making tool there, then we have the fullest, most dexterous range of movement that our bodies can provide.

Tripod Grasps Developing

Activities to support fine motor development and pencil grasp. On your tables you will find a range of activities that can strengthen, support and develop the smaller muscles in our fingers.

Hand-Eye Co-ordination One of the fundamental skills which holds the key to so many of the things that children need to be able to do; not only to become successful mark makers, but to have success in virtually every aspect of their life. It is this ability to control hand movement guided by vision. Most of the activities you completed involved this vital skill.

Dough Gym Session

What is Dough Gym? Dough Gym (also known as Dough Disco) is an activity which combines the use of pieces of dough with a series of hand and finger exercises. These strengthen and develop children’s fine and gross motor dexterity, hand-eye co-ordination, balance, low load control, grip and most importantly, their self-esteem! (Type in Dough Disco on YouTube for more ideas)

Are you ready to Dough Gym? Movements to include: Squeezing Squashing Smacking Patting Poking Rolling- round and side to side

Writing and Mark Making EYFS Developmental Milestones months Can copy some letters e.g. letters from their names Draws lines and circles using gross motor skills Sometimes gives meaning to marks as they draw or paint

Mark Making Initially children form lines and dots They then develop the ability to imitate a directional mark made by others. Gradually curves and enclosures emerge (enclosures made anticlockwise are a pre-requisite for forming letters) Children then develop the ability to copy straight lines and curves made by others. Finally they develop the ability to use straight lines and curves to form symbols.

Mark Making Ideas

Writing Development

Mirror Writing Do not panic if this is happening it will adjust over time. We are all born with the potential to do things in many directions. If we do an action one way we are most likely to do it in the opposite direction another time. Such as turning on a tap, the brain sends messages telling you to turn the tap one way, it then sends messages telling you to turn it the other way. With writing there is only one set direction (in English) so we have to learn to eliminate one of those directions so we produce the right one.

Thank you for coming Any Questions?