ANYONE HAD A CHILD WHO HAS NEEDED HELP WITH FINE MOTOR SKILLS?

[hifi]

and if you have what kind and did it help? tia

[Chocolateteapot]

DD went to OT and they helped her with tying laces, pencil grip, zips, using scissors . She also used to get a session with the SENCO where she did various exercises to strengthen her muscles and to try to improve her writing.

She's just started middle school and has been going to a club they run for small gruops of children. They are doing cross stitch, Christmas crafts, sugar paste flowers and some Easter thing. She thinks it is great and is oblivious to the fact that it is clearly designed to help fine motor skills.

[hifi]

thanks chocolate, did she attend ot in school hours? did they recommend any toys you could use a t home?

[magso]

Our Ot suggested making things with playdough ie a plate full of peas ( using finger rolling only not hands), sausages ( hand rolling) and beans (finger rolling)- and making skinny worms! We also played with playmobil and all those fiddly little accessories. O and Xs. Lots of drawing lines and worms, snails and patterns. (You can tell ds is a boy!) We also raced to post things through holes and slots. We had to work on cross body and balance skills also.

[Romy7]

OT here too.
can add threading (beads - start big (or cotton reels lol) and get smaller - use a shoelace with a firm end if too difficult on string at first)
we've found travel versions of things like connect 4 brilliant for posting practise, but loads of travel versions so you can pick which appeals - lots of pincer grip stuff as everything is smaller.
finger puppets for finger isolation.
you can start with 'easygrip' scissors if struggling with normal ones.
also clothes pegs and shoe box - try and get all the pegs clipped onto the box edge.
apols if these are inappropriate - don't know what age child/ level of intervention needed...
oh, oh, and bubble wrap lol! the only time kids are actively encouraged to pop away!

[hifi]

thanks everyone, she also has problems with balance.dd is 4, school have picked it up.

[Troutpout]

We have just finished a block of sessions for gross and fine motor skills.

Exercises for fine motor were:

Making models (we were told plasticine was better...more resistance)
Making models blind or not looking
Writing without looking
playing 'boxes' but claiming the boxes by drawing spirals inside (spirals need to be smaller and getting bigger without touching the sides.
Hama beads
hammering and srewing nails/screws into a plank of wood
Small Lego
Tug of war with screwed up newspaper
Finger wrestling
Picking up a small coin and 'walking' it up your hand into your palm and down again
Walking a pencil though your pencil grip from tip to end and back again.

Ds is 11 so only attended 3 sessions and then we both learnt the exercises and we have to do these every day at home(they don't like taking secondary age children out of school here)

[TopBitch]

Hifi, do you have a PT as well?

[Romy7]

dd2 is just 5 here - have they suggested a paediatric assessment if it looks like there are concerns in more than one area?

you might like to look ar 'write from the start' by teodorescu and addy (best place to buy seems to be the dyspraxia foundation) which has lots of ideas regarding improving pencil control... not a 'writing' course as such but lots of pre-writing skills.

[Romy7]

OT will advise though - just as an example of what is 'out there' and ideas lol...

[hifi]

whats pt topbitch?

[Romy7]

physio

[magso]

Could pt be physiotherapist perhaps?
Ds was 7 but has delays all round, so developmentally like a 3 - 4 year old, where all therapy had to be play based or frequently rewarded. He has several squishy fiddle toys (themslves good exersize! ) to reward cooperation. Games like hitting aliens as they pop up, or trying to remove swords from the dragon, or magnetic fishing also made good rewards for his salt but are good for coordination!
Balance - sitting on a space hopper throwing bean bags into a bucket, standing on one leg to throw bean bag, balancing along a plank on the ground, walking along a line, rolling ball to a cushion goal whilst lying on side or kneeling on one leg. We felt learning to scoot on a 3 wheel scooter was useful, ds can now ride his 2 wheel bike!

[ahundredtimes]

Plasticine v. good, especially the breaking bits off and rolling.

Buckaroo - but ds2 found it a bit stressful.

Hama beads would be good, but still too fiddly for ds2 (9)

Squeezy balls he quite liked, just for building up strength in his hands.

I used to give him scissors and old wallpaper samples to cut out - so he didn't have to cut along a line, that came later. He could just get used to the cutting without the stress of doing it properly if that makes sense.

Big cotton reels and big laces more successful than threading beads.

Now he's older - I have discovered a fascination for BATTLESHIPS just because it gets him putting the beads on pegs.

At 4 - we did loads of drawing with chalk outside, and old big rolls of wallpaper (again) to get big actions going in his shoulders.

[ahundredtimes]

That tug of war with a newspaper is inspired. [notes down]

TP can you explain the coin and pencil walking thing again?

[ahundredtimes]

DS2 used to like a bowl of gloop too. He'd play lots of with proper bread dough, and then do rolling out etc. This was helpful when he was little, because he liked cooking but was wary of plasticine, pens etc, but actually did loads of getting his hands in and rolling about, liked it because it was warm and I think it felt better for some reason.

[Romy7]

squishy toys can be brought from hawkins bazaar really cheaply - lots of grotesque eyeballs and those weird squashy balls in net bags - bu be aware those are really difficult for those with a weak grasp - dd2 can manage eyeballs but not the ball things lol.

[coppertop]

Ds1 has problems with fine motor skills. The most successful thing for him so far has been using playdough. For one of his IEP targets he had to roll and squeeze particular shapes for about 5 minutes or so each day.

For writing skills he was encouraged to do things like making the shapes of the letters in a shallow tray of sand or other similar materials.

As he's got older (he's now 8) the focus has been more on strengthening the muscles in his wrists. The OT suggested learning a musical instrument, particularly something like piano or keyboards. Squashy toys like the ones Romy suggests are also good.

[coppertop]

The Novelty Warehouse is also a fantastic site for this kind of thing.

[hecAteTheirBrains]

yes, my eldest has got erbs palsy and has needed help to develop both gross and fine skills.

re fine motor skills
One of the things we did a lot was beads. pick them up, thread them, put them in a pot etc.

get some paper and draw a wavy line on it, then get him to cut along the line.

tracing, join the dots, colouring, blackboard, stickers, typing, basically anything where you have to move your fingers..peg board was very good, he liked lining them up by colour.

we do thumb wrestling. (he cheats! )

I bought a tiny bongo drum! from hawkins. here

[ChopsTheDuck]

ds1 has fine and gross motor issues.

We've done a lot of the things that have already been mentioned but we were also told to do big exercises with his arms as well as practising finger things. We were told that things like making patterns with a ribbon on a stick, big pictures with chalk or paint were supposed to help with fine motor control too. He has made some improvement, but it's impossinble really to say what has helped.

[Romy7]

oo, yes, forgot keyboard/ piano! like coppertop said! we bought dd2 a pink keyboard for christmas last year (she was 4)and she loooooves it - lots of finger isolation involved, and even suitable for little ones who have no intention of reading music or taking it into lessons etc. we bought one with a selection of beats and that played set tunes as well as letting you play your own - the combination of keys and buttons and on/off switch is a winner lol.

have you been advised to use dycem or other non-slip mat under any activities? sometimes it just makes it a bit easier to keep everything under control.

[hifi]

really good advice, i will get my shopping list done.

[Plumbuddle]

Hi, another thing our OT gave us was theraputty which has different consistencies, it's available commercially as Thinking Putty from places like hawkin. Great for fiddling without being obliged to make anything, suited our son. We were also told repeatedly that a major issue with fine motor skills can be that the gross motor skills are not sorted, so the answer for that tends to be swimming and trampolining. Our son really benefitted from both and particularly trampo, where you can get a great sense of power and success. His posture improved, and along with it his hand grip.