My (just) 5 year old DS started school (Kindergarten in the US) in August. We only moved here in July, from the UK. The teacher has (on a few occasions now) raised a concerns surrounding his fine motor development, and has sent home a few exercises for us to do with him to work on this. The concern seems to arise due to his messy handwriting (they are just learning to write 'properly' now). The teacher has explained to me that finger muscles need to be developed just like any other muscle. At the moment her concerns seem to be quite high level: she is not suggesting that he needs referred for assessment at this stage, just that he is a bit behind and needs to work hard on this.
The thing is, I don't see it. He did 3 years of nursery / preschool in the UK, and was always considered pretty competent at drawing / writing. He draws loads (of his own choosing), writes us lots of notes to leave around the house etc, and has always been very enthusiastic about putting pen to paper. His writing is big and messy, but until recently I don't think anyone has ever suggested to him that it should be otherwise - I was just pleased that he seemed keen to try to write at all as a preschooler. His report from preschool in the UK (attached to a state primary / taught by a qualified teacher) talked about how good he was at trying to form letters and numbers, and how detailed and competent his drawings were (i.e. this was a particular strength of his).
He has been competent with 'little' Lego for a couple of years, loves and is good at Hama beads, sticky mosaics and other small craft things. He can dress and undress himself (when he's in the mood!), although he can't do buttons or tie laces, but then I haven't particularly tried to teach him this yet. He eats properly with cutlery (although is often a little messy).
Should I take this teacher's concerns seriously? To my mind he's just a slightly slap-dash boy, to whom "writing neatly" is a new concept, and not one he is fully signed up to yet having been allowed to write however he wanted for the last couple of years, since he started (at a fairly young age) trying to write his name etc. But I don't want to take a head-in-sand approach if he really does sound behind.
For now we are doing some of the suggested exercises, and about 15 minutes a day of handwriting practise, but I am viewing this more as just that, handwriting practise, rather than an attempt to address fine motor development issues. Is this something that I should be reading into further?