Good Beginnings Therapy Blog: fine motor development

Ten Fine Motor Crafts for Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day is right around the corner, so while we're all inside on these cold days, we've compiled some great crafts to help address those OT goals your kids are working so hard to meet!

(Organized by age level and skills addressed, click the title to follow the link to the original craft directions.)

Pom-Pom Valentine Painting

This craft is great for preschoolers. We love it for addressing pincer strength, tripod grasp, fine motor control, and bilateral hand use!

Toilet paper Roll Heart Stamp

This craft is great for preschoolers and addresses fine motor control, finger strength, and shoulder stability! Bonus points for using watercolors on the background first.

Paper Plate Yarn Hearts

This craft is great for early elementary kids. We love it for addressing pincer grasp, forearm supination/pronation, grip strength, bilateral hand use, and fine motor control. Whew-- that's a lot!

Fingerprint Tree

This craft is great for preschoolers and addresses tactile sensitivity, finger strength, and proprioception. This craft can be tailored to older children in drawing the tree and cutting the heart stencil.

Handprint Love Bug

This craft is great for toddlers and preschoolers, and addresses tactile sensitivity, fine motor skills, hand strength, and cutting skills (optional for older kids).

Paper Weave Valentine

This craft is great for early elementary kids and addresses bilateral hand use, cutting skills, motor planning, and fine motor strength. This one requires patience, but the pay-off is adorable!

Paper Heart Penguin

This craft is great for early elementary addresses cutting, visual skills, bilateral hand use, and hand strength. And he's cute!

Tic-Tac-Toe Snack Craft

This snack crafts is perfect for preschoolers and early elementary kids, and addresses hand/finger strength, fine motor control, and food texture aversions (swap ingredients to addresses specific concerns). Yummy!

Valentine's Fruit Plate

This snack craft is great for toddlers and preschoolers, and addresses pincer strength, sorting, visual motor, and forearm pronation. And it's healthy!

Find the Hearts Sensory Bin

This crafts is great for preschoolers and addresses tactile perception, visual discrimination, and stereognosis (if played with eyes closed). The craft can be amended to include tweezers or just little fingers, or use conversation hearts for an extra incentive!

Happy crafting everyone-- and Happy Valentine's Day! Don't forget to bring your favorite therapist chocolate and a hug! ;)

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, by Kate G.

New Year, New Habits: Helping Around the House

It's a new year-- a time many of us make resolutions to take better care of ourselves, get organized, connect with our family. As a parent of two very loving, adorable and energetic boys, one of my resolutions is to find some time for ME, and the best way I have found this extra time is to delegate household responsibilities! True, it’s easier said than done but I assure you it’s possible. Here are some fun and easy ways that children of all ages and abilities can help out at home, as well as specific products that enhance independence. Not only will these activities help your child achieve their therapy goals, YOU get a little time off-- everybody wins!

Spraying and wiping surfaces and windows

Squirt bottles help strengthen hand muscles, as well as reinforce hand separation skills necessary for a mature writing grasp and scissor skills-- and kids love to spray them! Throw in a squeegee and now they’re strengthening their wrist and forearm. This a great activity for children two and older.

Folding Laundry

Younger children can help sort and match socks and underwear. For older children, folding laundry (matching corners, aligning seams) is a great way to work on spatial awareness, discrimination and visual closure, fine motor skills, and general motor planning and sequencing skills.

Loading the Dishwasher

My husband and I have a friendly competition on who can fit the most articles in the dishwasher-- sometimes I think we spend more time loading the dishwasher than it would take to wash and dry them by hand! Why not have your school-aged child help-- it's like real life Tetris...with less sitting, and more standing and squatting. Let younger children play at the sink with bubbles and a sponge, washing non-breakable dishes and utensils. They are working on sequencing, tactile exploration and discrimination, bilateral motor coordination, standing endurance and visual attention.

Vacuuming

You know how your child’s therapist has been suggesting proprioceptive (heavy work) activities and strengthening/endurance opportunities? Here's your opportunity! Good-bye dog fur and crumbs, hello regulation, body awareness, and endurance!

Sweeping

Kids eat dinner, Mom and Dad spend the rest of the night hunched under the table scooping up half of dinner that ended up on floor. Sounds familiar, right? Let the kids grab their dustpan and brush and easily maneuver themselves under the table to sweep up the crumbs. Now they are integrating reflexes, emphasizing body awareness, enhancing bilateral motor coordination and saving our backs. Double win!

Meal Prep ideas

Chopping: Have you seen those nylon knives with serrated edges and a blunt tip? They are the perfect tool for children 5 and up to practice their cutting skills. Delegate that salad or chopped fruit to your child as your “sous chef.” Bonus: children involved in meal preparation are more likely to try their dinner choices and broaden the variety of their diets!

Cherry Pitter: Yes these do exist and they are fantastic! Just put the cherry in the holder, squeeze the handles, and out goes the pit. Perfect for hand strengthening!

- Olive grabber/ Pickle Pinchers: This kitchen tool that looks like the ever-frustrating claw game you find at arcades, but it’s so much more fun. When your child uses this kitchen tool to grab olives and pickles from a jar, he or she is strengthening hand separation skills and the web space between the thumb and index finger.

- Mix it up: Have your little ones help stir various batters, soups, noodle dishes and they are reinforcing bilateral coordination and upper extremity endurance.

- Fern Barry, OTR/L