The Importance Of Developing Fine Motor Skills

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The Importance Of Developing Fine Motor
Skills
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Create the right play environment
You can help children develop motor skills by
providing an environment, experiences and
activities that encourage a coordinated approach
to overall physical development. It is also
essential to ensure that the activities to
improve fine motor skills create rich and varied
opportunities for large and small movements. Make
sure that your child is supported during the
process of developing her fine and gross motor
skills. When your child faces difficulties,
encourage her by making changes to the materials
she uses or modifying the activities. Ensure that
you are constantly and gently giving praise and
encouragement.
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Establishing building a framework
While fine gross motor skills develop naturally
from birth, you can aid and accelerate this
process through constant practice and play.
Participating in activities that involve lacing,
stacking and squeezing will help to support this
developmental area whilst children can also have
fun. There are a number of other games and
physical activities that are ideal for developing
fine motor skills. Playing with pegs, building
blocks, putting shapes into appropriate slots and
clay modelling, lend themselves well to
strengthening hand muscles and improving hand-eye
coordination.
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Helping develop fine motor skills at home
When it comes to fine motor skills, most of your
childs development will happen naturally as they
learn and play. But you can help your child
improve these skills by carefully choosing the
right games and activities to improve fine motor
skills. For instance, you can invite your child
to help you in the kitchen and around the home.
Help knead the dough, pour their own milk, set
the table, and help clean up their room. You can
also let them practice their fine motor skills by
using tongs to turn a pancake, or practice
putting rubber bands around a can.
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Enjoy playing with dough for hours
Using play dough to play is such a useful
activity for improving fine motor skills. You can
make playdough at home in a range of colours and
different scents can be added to create an
excellent sensory experience for your child. To
create excitement and maintain interest, your
child can mold play dough in time to music and
get her to perform different actions such as
pinching, rolling, flattening, and pressing each
individual finger into the dough.
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Enjoy playing with dough for hours
Playdough is a soft and flexible sculpting
medium, perfect for mess-free creative play. Its
granular texture also makes it ideal for sensory
play, and whenever it shows signs of drying out,
just spray a little water on it, start to knead,
and it is ready to be used again and
again! Squeezing, squashing, rolling, and
manipulating it to form shapes, strengthens the
key muscles of little hands and fingers, and
improves coordination required to perform precise
movements that will be needed to help in gripping
a pencil and writing.
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Fishing for alphabet numbers
This fishing for magnetic letters and numbers is
a perfect learning activity that ensures
maintaining high interest levels and improves
focus. Your little one will have great fun
singing, recognizing, and counting as she catches
and fishes them out one by one. Use different
colored papers, it has to be thick enough to stay
stiff and not curl or fold. Cut the paper into
large squares. Write the alphabet A to Z and the
numbers 0 to 9 on separate square pieces. Make
sure they are big and easily seen on both sides
of the card with a thick marker pen.
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Create a sensory board for your baby
A sensory board is the most effective way to
support your childs sensory experiences and
gives you many opportunities to teach. It is a
fun way to explore a range of textures and
sensations and to stimulate a childs sense of
sight, sound, smell and touch. Sensory boards
encourage natural curiosity and investigative
skills and help children to develop their fine
motor skills as they coordinate their movements
to feel the different materials. Babies and
toddlers develop preferences as to which textures
they like and dislike. A sensory board can also
help children learn new words too as you support
them to describe the different things they are
feeling.
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Turn into a super sorter
By teaching your child to sort small plastic
balls by their colour, you are essentially making
her learn to concentrate, improve dexterity, and
ensure fine motor development. Sorting also helps
your child learn to work with a tweezer when she
is ready for it. But to be able to use a tweezer,
your child has to master using tongs first. Tongs
also help your child to develop the pincer grip
which involves using her thumb and index finger
together to grab things. The pincer grip is a
must-have skill as it is needed to hold and write
with a pencil.
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Stringing the alphabet in a sequence
Parents celebrate their childs mastery of the
ABCs as an important milestone on the road to
reading and writing. But, theres much more to
learning the alphabet than rendering it in a cute
way. Learning the alphabet is a rite of passage
in a childs literacy journey. This is why being
consistent in your messaging about letters, how
they sound and opportunities for repetition, and
the right sequencing of the alphabet is
important. Needless to say, letter by letter your
child will get there.
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Hanging the laundry out to dry
This imaginative wash line play is so simple to
put together, yet so effective for a child to
pretend. Remember, children often learn by
watching, and imitating others perform an action
while absorbing these experiences by engaging in
pretend play. Manipulating and pinching the pegs
are great for strengthening finger muscles and
working on those fine motor skills and also
improve eye and hand coordination by holding the
clothes at the same time as watching what they
are doing with the pegs.
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Digging for spaghetti worms
Through this play activity, you will combine fine
motor skills with exploration. Find a large,
shallow tray, cooked spaghetti, a plastic
container, tongs and slightly moist earth. This
activity combines sensory play, discovery and
fine motor skills for a rich learning experience.
Small tongs feature ergonomic depressions to
guide the correct grip and will help develop fine
motor control and build pencil holding skills and
help in developing handwriting skills.
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Conclusion
My Gym has perfected the art of developing
activities to improve fine motor skills and has
specially designed programs that will lay a firm
foundation for personal, academic and future
growth by involving your child in age-appropriate
structured and unstructured physical activities
and developing thinking and problem-solving
skills.
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6789 7061
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(65) 6440 9916
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