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Relations Between Playing Activities And Fine Motor Development

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Relations Between Playing Activities And Fine Motor Development

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This resource offers an insight into how play can enhance young children's fine motor skills and this relates to Maria Montessori's concept of play. The play that links sensorimotor, cognitive and social-emotional experiences provides an ideal setting from brain development. This is supported by Prime Minister Lee's speech in 2012 that play enhances children’s physical development. Educators need to adopt the mindset that young children should be given the opportunity to gain or enhance language, social and motor skills.
through play. Play offers a natural process for children to develop and practice their fine motor skills. With play, children’s fine motor skills will be enhanced, especially in the area of their finger-grasps, which provides the basis for drawing and writing.

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Relations Between Playing Activities And Fine Motor Development

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Keep Taking The Tablets: iPads, story apps and early literacy

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Keep Taking The Tablets: iPads, story apps and early literacy

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This resource offers a multimodal perspective of young children using technological gadgets such as iPads to engage in story applications which requires their concentration and eye-hand coordination. This relates to an integrated learning approach that Nurturing Early Learners practitioners practice. This is supported by a research paper written by Susan Edwards on the topic of "Digital Play", emphasizing on the positive influence of technology use on children's learning and developmental outcomes when they enhance their eye-hand coordination through the use of digital gadgets.

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This resource offers a variety of strategies on how children can enhance their pincer grasping skills and this relates to Arnola Gesell's maturational-developmental theory. This theory is supported by Gesell Institute Of Child Development, which documented patterns in the way children develop, showing that all children go through similar and predictable sequences, though each child develops his / her handwriting skills at his / her own pace.

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Supports for Vocabulary Instruction in Early Language and Literacy Methods Textbooks

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Supports for Vocabulary Instruction in Early Language and Literacy Methods Textbooks

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This resource provides an overview of early literacy methods that support young children vocabulary learning. This relates to Lev Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development which children acquire new language skills through social interaction. Children will engage in conversations where they will pick up new vocabularies from talking to their peers. This is supported by a research paper by Carien Wilsenach that having an abundance of knowledge of vocabularies aids in early literacy writing and other basic literacy skills such as phoneme-grapheme correspondences.

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Supports for Vocabulary Instruction in Early Language and Literacy Methods Textbooks

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This resource offers a two-way strategy in which young children can explore technological gadgets while practicing their finger strength and tripod grip. This relates to

Jerome Bruner's constructivist theory. Learning is an active process in which learners construct new ideas or concepts based upon their current or past knowledge. The learner selects and transforms information, constructs hypotheses, and makes decisions, relying on a cognitive structure to do so. Cognitive structure (i.e., schema, mental models) provides meaning and organization to experiences and allows the individual to “go beyond the information given”. Instead of letting technology to harm children's fine motor development in the future, implement innovative methods to bring learning new knowledge and practicing a skill together. This is supported by Helene Mclaughlin's article about fine motor skills technology where she shared her experience on how she managed to fix her son's grip issues.

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This resource offers fours enriching academic vocabulary strategies on how teachers can use them to help children in building a robust vocabulary. Particularly, I liked the game on 'Messenger and Scribe'. This relates to Judy Willis, neurologist, and teacher, writes that students, especially adolescents, are more likely to store information as part of their long-term memory and make it available for later retrieval by participating in activities they enjoy. Researcher Robert Marzano also endorses learning games as an "engagement activity" that can result in increased student academic achievement. This is supported by a research paper on  the impact of using fun activities on vocabulary learning. Fun exercise are a helpful and successful instrument that ought to be connected in vocabulary classes. The utilisation of amusement in vocabulary learning is an approach to make the lessons all the more fascinating, agreeable and powerful.

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Each month, Larry Ferlazzo, a teacher and edublogger, offers ideas for using recent Times articles, photographs and videos to engage English Language Learners - or any students for whom The New York Times can be challenging.
This month: a picture-labeling activity to build vocabulary; a video-making challenge inspired by a Times piece about a piano; a sequencing exercise for understanding complex passages; and, finally, a "noisy, fun, and rambunctious learning game well worth the organized chaos that ensues."

Teaching With Photos
Using The Picture Word Inductive Model
The Picture Word Inductive Model, originally developed by Emily Calhoun can be used with E.L.L.'s.

In the adaptation I use, I first choose an image that relates to the thematic unit we are studying at the time. (One source of wonderful photos is The Times's Year in Pictures for 2012.)

For example, if we are learning about "home," I might use an image from this Times slide show on children's messy bedrooms and use this teaching sequence:

Monday: Invite students to identify objects in the photo and label a classroom version so it looks something like the photo at the top of this post, or like this one. As we go, I'll also teach some vocabulary, and together we'll end up with a total of 20 to 25 words. Students will then label their own personal copy of the photo, or related photos they find or bring in on their own.

Tuesday: Students put the 20 to 25 words into three or four categories of their choosing (words that have an "e" in them, words related to objects, etc.) and then, using dictionaries and their own knowledge, add five or so new words that fit into each of those categories.

Wednesday: I provide students with 10 to 20 "cloze" sentences that they have to complete using the words we are learning. One cloze might look like this:

The __________________ are on the ___________________.
desk floor clothes chair

Students then categorize the finished sentences again, in any way they choose.

Thursday: Students write several new sentences about the picture under each sentence category and turn each category into a paragraph. As students advance in their English skills, they can learn about introductions, topic sentences and conclusions.

Friday: They put their paragraphs together and choose a title. Voilà: Each student has an essay.

Teaching With Videos
Creating a Video, Slide Show or Animation
Tell students that they are going to watch a short video composed of photographs with musical accompaniment, and that the photos and music tell a story. Ask them to be prepared to write a few sentences after, describing the story told in the video. Then show students The Times's video "Solo, Piano - N.Y.C."

Afterward, give students a few minutes to write down some sentences summarizing the story and share those orally with a partner. Next, ask individual students to share sentences in chronological order and write them on an overhead projector. (See December's post for more details on this type of instructional strategy called the Language Experience Approach.)

Explain that students are now going to work in pairs to create their own similar series of photos or an animation that tells a story without words. Then they will show their completed project to the class, who will have to reconstruct the story in the same way they did for the piano video. Give students a storyboard with between 8 and 30 squares for them to map out their project, which could take various forms:

Students might take photos and upload them to an easy slide show site like Slidebomb Academy, Photolist or one of many others. They could also turn them into a video with an application like Animoto.

Students could create their slide shows with tools that let them grab images off the Web instead of taking their own photos. Many of the same tools listed above allow that option, but Bookr may be the easiest to use.

Instead of using photos, students could create online animations to tell their story. One of the easiest is Make It Share It but there are many others.

Students could even compose their own musical accompaniment by using one of many online musical creation sites, playing live music while they show their story, or even just by humming (which is the most fun!).

Take turns showing the slide shows or animations, and after their audience of classmates say what they think the story told, the creators can affirm or correct them.

Even though the story that is created is silent, it creates the conditions for plenty of English practice in its preparation and follow-up discussions. The engaged and enjoyable atmosphere that results can't hurt, either.

Teaching With Articles
Practicing Sequencing Activities
Sequencing activities - cutting passages up and having students put them back in the correct order - is a common language-learning task in the E.S.L. classroom. But its value is not limited to English Language Learners: Benjamin Franklin famously developed his writing style by regularly cutting apart essays he liked and going back to them weeks or months later to challenge himself to put them back together again.

Having students begin by reconstructing comic strips can be an introduction to this kind of activity. Then, they can move to short "recaps" of sports games (like the one in the first part of this section) or obituaries.

Putting the passages in the correct order, however, is just one part of this kind of learning task. Equally important is having students explain (for example, by highlighting "clues") why they believe certain text goes where it does. As research shows, this kind of "explanation-based learning" can have numerous benefits, especially increasing the odds of students using the strategies they successfully apply in these sequencing activities to other comprehension tasks.
Playing Messenger and Scribe

Messenger and Scribe is a popular game adapted to the language-learning classroom by Joan Wink.:

1. Tape five individual lines from a text, like this article about the soccer star Lionel Messi (it should be on a familiar topic), in different sections of the classroom.

2. Pair students up, with one as the "messenger" and the other as the "scribe."

3. When the teacher says "Go!" the messenger runs to one of the texts, reads it, and runs back to the scribe to report what he or she read. The scribe writes it down. The messenger then runs back to the same text to get the rest of the words or goes to a different text.

4. The first three to six pairs who show the teacher all the texts written down correctly, including grammar and punctuation, are winners.

5. Messengers and scribes can exchange roles during the game, but students cannot just stand by a text and yell what it says to the scribe.

This is a noisy, fun and rambunctious learning game well worth the organized chaos that ensues.

Find more in the Ideas for E.L.L.'s series.

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Ideas for English Language Learners | Labeling Photos, Sequencing Passages and More

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Each month, Larry Ferlazzo, a teacher and edublogger, offers ideas for using recent Times articles, photographs and videos to engage English Language Learners - or any students for whom The New York Times can be challenging.

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LetterSchool - Improving Children's Reading And Writing Skills 

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LetterSchool - Improving Children's Reading And Writing Skills 

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This is a mobile / tablet App that teaches children the layout of the letters by engaging them to trace uppercase and lowercase alphabet letters on the sensory device. The App aids in children's motion of tracing with their fingers by having dot points for them to follow and arrows to direct them. This relates to the "Learning In The Digital Age" concept, which is supported by the introduction chapter of the book "iPads in the Early Years : Developing Literacy and Creativity". A data research carried out by a school-aged children's learning behavioral specialist named Victoria Molfese, concluded that children tend to memorize the layout of the alphabets better when an electronic sensory gadget is used.

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LetterSchool - Learn the world to write and spell!

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The #1 alphabet tracing and words spelling app for toddlers & pre-schoolers. Recommended and used by parents, teachers, and occupational therapists! Loved & played by more than 7 million kids and used at more than 5,000 schools!

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Teaching Handwriting To Children - 5 Essential Practices

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Teaching Handwriting To Children - 5 Essential Practices

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This video resource provides an insight into 5 essential principles that guides the teaching of handwriting. When learning handwriting, children should be seated in small groups, learn to write uppercase and lowercase alphabets as two individual groups, and be provided with various sensory materials to enhance their learning. This relates to the "multi-sensory learning" concept mentioned in the article "Handwriting in early childhood education: Current research and future implications", which emphasized the importance of teachers providing children with different materials, e.g. sandpaper, rice, iPad, playdough, to improve their handwriting skills.

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Teaching Handwriting to Children: 5 Essential Practices

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This website offers a range of fun and involving hands-on activities that engage children in the learning of handwriting. Easy to carry out activities such as crayon resistant art, writing on windows and sandbox writing were some the ideas mentioned in the webpage. This relates to the concept of "sensory integration", where  the integration of vestibular and proprioceptive senses results in eye movements, posture, balance, muscle tone, and gravitational security. This is also supported by a research conducted by Katherine D. Arbuthnott and Gregory P. Kratzig where it was found that sensory learning is a more effective way of learning than general memorization.

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Teaching kids the skills needed to use writing tools and develop handwriting isn't always easy, but it certainly doesn't have to be boring! If you are working on writing with your kids, these 21 fun handwriting activities are sure to be a hit.

21 Fun Handwriting Activities

Writing on windows is sure to be a hit with little ones. // Our Whimsical Days

Learning to form letters? Try this simple handwriting trick! // This Reading Mama

Try some or all of these handwriting activities depending on the age and interests of your children. You are sure to find some they enjoy!

Writing Tools to Have on Hand

In the classroom, in addition to regular pencils, crayons, and markers, I also like to have certain items on hand for writing. These items are my favorite to have because they provide support as needed, variety, and engagement!

Latest posts by Alex (see all)

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21 Fun Handwriting Activities for Kids - The Letters of Literacy

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Teaching kids the skills needed to use writing tools and develop handwriting isn't always easy, but it certainly doesn't have to be boring! If you are working on writing with your kids, these 21 fun handwriting activities are sure to be a hit. Writing on windows is sure to be a hit with little ones.

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Kindergarten Handwriting Activities and Tips

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Kindergarten Handwriting Activities and Tips

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This weblink provides a variation of interesting tips and activities on teaching children handwriting. These tips and activities aims to effectively develop the eye-hand coordination, visual perceptual skills and fine motor skills (pincer grasping). This is relatable to concept of "multi-modal learning", which is supported by the multisensory theory, found in Chapter 7: Sense of Play, from the book "A Teacher's Guide to Multisensory Learning : Improving Literacy by Engaging the Senses". Multisensory learning is described as a form of education that engages with the children's 5 senses, and produces a better learning outcome than children learning handwriting using traditional methods.

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Viewing this page on your device?
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I use small photos to illustrate the information and activities that I share, and you will have a much better experience on this website if you can view the images.

These kindergarten handwriting tips and pre-writing activities are designed to help your child establish a good foundation for future handwriting skills.

Because I believe that young children should NOT be spending a lot of time on seat work, these activities are designed to prepare your kindergarten child for handwriting, and not just for practicing letter formations.

Merely sitting your child down to practice a handwriting worksheet will probably not help much!

You can help prepare your child for kindergarten handwriting by working on the underlying pre-writing skills.

Pre-Writing Skills for Kindergarten Handwriting:

Eye-Hand Coordination

In preschool and kindergarten, children should be using large movement activities to improve eye-hand coordination skills, and then transferring these skills to short periods of pencil-and-paper activities.

Working on eye hand coordination will help your child to be able to work within the lines when formal handwriting begins.

Here are some ideas:

Desktop Eye-Hand Activities

Although I do not recommend lots of desk work in kindergarten, there are times when some paper and pencil visual motor activities can be really useful.

You can browse more eye-hand coordination activity ideas on my site.

Visual Perceptual Skills

Your child needs to develop visual perceptual skills to help see the differences between letters and numbers to help with the correct formations.

Try some visual discrimination activities such as Where's Wally and other puzzle books, and visual memory activities like Concentration, to boost visual perceptual skills.

If visual memory is good, it will help your child to remember what letters look like, and will also help your child learn to copy words down from the board more quickly, as he/she will be able to remember what was seen and not need to check back as often, which can slow your child down in a handwriting lesson.

Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills play a big role in kindergarten handwriting. By now your child may have learned to hold a pencil correctly.

However, just being able to hold a pencil does not mean that the hand and fingers are ready for lots of handwriting!

Keep the hand muscles growing stronger with lots of scissor cutting and playdough activities, and work on increasing finger dexterity.

This will help your child to control the pencil, which will help with attaining neat handwriting.

Strong hands will also tire less easily, which means your child will have a better chance of keeping up with the volume of writing required from the first grade onwards. Try some hand strengthening exercises!

Remember, cutting out along a line also helps your child to focus visually on what the hands are doing - a good start for kindergarten handwriting!

Visual Motor Integration

Elsewhere on my site, I have explained visual-motor integration in some detail.

As far as kindergarten handwriting is concerned, visual-motor integration ( VMI) plays an essential role in helping your child to be able to copy/draw shapes, numbers and letters.

In Kindergarten, you can reinforce the copying and drawing of shapes, before working on numbers and letters.

After your child has spent some time working in large formats, try some simple grid pictures or dot pictures for your child to copy.

These 2 sets of printable (downloadable) worksheets have been a big help to me (these links open in a new window/tab): Follow the Path and Grid Drawing.

Monster Mazes also has pages that work on visual-motor integration as well as eye-hand coordination.

It is really important that your child learns the correct number and letter formations once you start working on letters and numbers.

Handwriting Heroes is a lovely program that teaches your child letter formations in groups of similar letters, with rhymes, stories and interesting pictures to help reinforce the correct formation.

Checkout my letter formation activities, and my page of letter formation tips and strategies for ideas to help your child master these skills!

Easier Activities

If your child needs simpler ideas than these, then take a look on these pages for some inspiration:

Resources To Help Prepare Your Child For Handwriting

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Kindergarten Handwriting Activities and Tips

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Viewing this page on your device? Please adjust your settings to enable images! I use small photos to illustrate the information and activities that I share, and you will have a much better experience on this website if you can view the images.

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Hand Eye Coordination Activities For Children

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Hand Eye Coordination Activities For Children

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This website offers preschool practioners and parents with a list of areas-focused fine-motor activities that promotes children's eye-hand coordination. These activities relate to Lerch, Harold A.'s concept of how children of all ages should be involved in age appropriate developmental motor activities to enhance their fine-motor skills. This is supported by an research journal named "The effect of fine motor skills on handwriting legibility in preschool age children." This research concluded on the fact that children who were exposed to more eye-hand coordination activities is better equipped with pincer-grasping skills, resulting in a more positive outcome in writing skills and legibility.

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Viewing this page on your device?
Please adjust your settings to enable images!
I use small photos to illustrate the information and activities that I share, and you will have a much better experience on this website if you can view the images.

Hand eye coordination is the skill that enables the eyes to guide the hands in accurate movement.

This page covers:

Why Is Hand Eye Coordination Important?

Good eye-hand coordination can help your child in so many different areas of life. Here are just a few:

Sports:
Hand eye coordination can help your child to catch a ball and hit a ball with a bat, and then graduate to more intense sporting demands.

Handwriting:
Visual-motor integration, which is a vital base for handwriting, grows out of this coordination skill. The eyes need to guide the hand in forming the letters and making sure they stay within the lines.

Reading:
Eye tracking skills, which are vital for reading, can be developed through games and activities used for hand eye coordination.

Play and Life Skills:
Young children use this skill in learning to stack towers, build with lego etc. We also need our eyes to guide our hands when we tie shoelaces and frost cakes!

Suspended Ball Activities

Do yourself a favor and suspend a ball in a net.

It will save you from chasing after countless missed balls while your kids practice their skills!

Use a net bag, the kind that you get fruit and veggies in.

Tie it to a length of rope.

The rope needs to be long enough to get the ball level with your child's chest.

Suspend the ball from any horizontal pole or even from a hook in a doorway.

Now try these suggestions:

Older kids can use smaller balls (eg tennis balls) to increase the challenge. Remind your child to not hit the ball too forcefully, to avoid being hit in the face with a rebound!

For extra challenge, ask your child to clap or twirl between pushing the ball away and catching it again.

Hand Eye Games For Younger Kids

1) Rolling A Ball

Have your child sit with legs apart, as shown, and you roll the ball to your child.

Your child needs to try and stop the ball before it hits the body. This means your child will be watching the ball carefully and then coordinating the hands to stop the ball at just the right time.

2) Object Relays

The kids stand in a line and pass the ball/object to the child behind them.

Do it overhead, then between the legs.

Encourage the kids to use both hands together.

Make it more fun by having a bucket of objects at the front that have to be transferred to an empty bucket at the back.

You can do this in fireman relay style, where everyone keeps their place, or have the last kid run to the front after placing the object in the bucket at the back, that way they all get a turn to be in front.

3) Passing and Gentle Tossing

It takes a lot of concentration for a toddler or a preschooler to pass or toss something carefully with both hands!

Play a variety of circle or line games, like the relays above, where balls or beanbags are carefully passed from one player to another.

Then upgrade to gentle tossing.

Have the kids move one step away from each other and then gently toss the ball or beanbag to each other.

For toddlers and preschoolers, I have some easy visual motor activities that can help improve hand eye coordination skills.

Eye-Hand Activities for Older Kids

1) Ball-Wall Toss

Ask your child to toss the ball against a wall and catch it again.

You will need to experiment a bit to find the most effective distance from the wall - it depends on the type of ball, and how forcefully your child throws it, but encourage your child to start with a gentle toss!

See how many your child can catch before missing and keep a running record of the best tally. Encourage your child to better the score each time!

2) Toss and Catch

Tossing a beanbag or ball into the air and catching again is a good hand-eye coordination exercise.

If your child tends to throw haphazardly, have your child stand in a hoop or mark a circle to stand in - this can help kids throw more carefully.

3) Threading and Lacing

Threading beads and completing a lacing card, are fine motor activities that have a big eye-hand coordination component. Use chunky beads and laces if your child struggles, or have your child thread beads onto a pipe cleaner/chenille stick for extra stability.

DaddiLifeForce has a really cute idea for a bead tree that your child may enjoy!

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Hand Eye Coordination Activities For Kids

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Viewing this page on your device? Please adjust your settings to enable images! I use small photos to illustrate the information and activities that I share, and you will have a much better experience on this website if you can view the images.

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This App available on iPads and tablets provides children with a multi-sensory experience where they are offered with the experience to play a range of engaging games that enhance the coordinated control of their eye movement with hand movement, together with the processing of visual input to guide the children towards completing the games. This relates to Vygotsky’s original conception of play, as well as the newer research's capture on new societal conditions where children could readily access and engage in new forms of play on digital devices. This is supported by NAEYC's theory on how early digital play will positively impact future  employability  and  economic

effectiveness.

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Kids play, parents learn! From the team at Lumosity, we welcome you to LumiKids Park, where children can have fun while using important core skills. Kids will love exploring this interactive park filled with surprises designed to make them giggle and keep them challenged.

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Hand-Eye Coordination In Toddlerhood, Preschool Years, and School-Aged Children

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Hand-Eye Coordination In Toddlerhood, Preschool Years, and School-Aged Children

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This webpage provides an insight on the various stages of eye-hand coordination in young children as their ages progress. This description is supported by Arnold Gesell's theory regarding physical development, about the patterns in the way children develop, showing that all children go through similar and predictable sequences, though each child moves through these sequences at his or her own rate or pace. A health assessment was conducted with a range of children with various ages. The results have revealed a sequence of learned postural‐motor, locomotor and eye–hand gripping skills which can contribute to the understanding of brain areas implicated in this maturation process.

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Toddlerhood, Preschool years, School-aged children

The ability to coordinate vision with fine motor skills.

Hand-eye coordination begins developing in infancy. Although it is an instinctive developmental achievement that cannot be taught, parents can hasten its progress by providing their children with stimulating toys and other objects that will encourage them to practice reaching out for things and grasping them.

Until the age of eight weeks, infants are too nearsighted to see objects at distances farther than about eight inches from their faces, and they have not yet discovered their hands, which are kept fisted throughout this period. By the age of two to two-and-a-half months, the eyes focus much better, and babies can follow a moving

object with their gaze, even turning their heads to keep sight of it longer. However, when a child this age drops an object, she will try to find it by feeling rather than looking for it, and although she plays with her hands, she does it without looking at them.

By three months, most infants will have made an important hand-eye connection; they can deliberately bring their hands into their field of . By now they are watching their hands when they with them. They also swipe at objects within their view, a repetitive activity that provides practice in estimating distance and controlling the hands. Attempts to grab onto things (which usually fail) consist of a series of tries, with the child looking at the object and then at his hand, moving his hand closer to it, and then re-sighting the object and trying again.

At the age of four or five months, hand-eye coordination is developed sufficiently for an infant to manipulate toys, and she will begin to seek them out. By the age of six months, she can focus on objects at a distance and consistently follow them with her eyes. At this point, the infant can sight an object and reach for it without repeatedly looking at her hand. She senses where her hand is and can lead it straight to the object, keeping her eyes on the object the entire time. By the final months of her first year, an infant can shift her gaze between objects held in both hands and compare them to each other.

Toddlerhood

The toddler stage brings further progress in hand-eye coordination, resulting in the control necessary to manipulate objects with increasing sophistication. The ability to sight and grasp objects accurately improves dramatically with the acquisition of the "pincer grasp." This ability to grasp objects between the thumb and fore-finger develops between the ages of 12 and 15 months. Around the same time, children begin stacking objects on top of each other. Most can stack two blocks by the age of 15 months and three by the age of 18 months. At this age they also begin emptying, gathering, and nesting objects, or placing one inside another. Toddlers can also draw horizontal and vertical pencil lines and circular scribbles, twist dials, push levers, pull strings, pound pegs, string large beads, put a key in a lock, and turn book pages. Eventually, they are able to stack as many as six blocks, unwrap small objects, manipulate snap toys, and play with clay. Between the ages of 15 and 23 months there is significant improvement in feeding skills, such as using a spoon and a cup.

Preschool years

During the preschool period, hand-eye coordination progresses to the point of near independence at self-care activities. A four-year-old is learning to handle eating utensils well and button even small buttons. Four-yearolds can also handle a pencil competently, copy geometric shapes and letters, and use scissors. By the age of five, a child's hand-eye coordination appears quite advanced, although it will still continue to be fine-tuned for several more years. He approaches, grasps, and releases objects with precision and accuracy. He may use the same toys as preschoolers, but he manipulates them with greater skill and purpose and can complete a familiar jigsaw puzzles with lightning speed. An important milestone in hand-eye progress at this stage is the child's ability to tie his own shoelaces. At the age of six, a child's visual orientation changes somewhat. Children of this age and older shift their gaze more frequently than younger children. They also have a tendency to follow the progress of an object rather than looking directly at it, a fact that has been linked to the practice of some six-year-olds using their fingers to mark their places when they are reading. Even when absorbed in tasks, they look away frequently, although their hands remain active.

School-aged children

Hand-eye coordination improves through middle childhood, with advances in speed, timing, and coordination. By the age of nine, the eyes and hands are well differentiated, that is, each can be used independently of the other, and improved finger differentiation is evident as well. Nine-year-olds can use carpentry and garden tools with reasonable skill and complete simple sewing projects.

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Hand-Eye Coordination - Toddlerhood, Preschool years, School-aged children

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Toddlerhood, Preschool years, School-aged children The ability to coordinate vision with fine motor skills. Hand-eye coordination begins developing in infancy . Although it is an instinctive developmental achievement that cannot be taught, parents can hasten its progress by providing their children with stimulating toys and other objects that will encourage them to practice reaching out for things and grasping them.

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Outdoor Activities that develop fine motor skills

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Outdoor Activities that develop fine motor skills

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This web page offers a range of practical life activities or daily routines to help children to strengthen their fine motor skills in a natural environment. During sand play, many teachers didn't realise that when children are  manipulating the sand between the fingers, it builds on dexterity, and pouring sand from one container to the other gets their forearms moving, which builds strength. This relates to Jerome Bruner's discovery learning theory. Bruner's theory is considered to be fully constructivist in nature. According to Bruner, discovery learning is an inquiry-based instructional approach in which the learner builds new knowledge or skills from prior knowledge and active experience. A news article by The Straits Time Singapore titled 'Outdoor education must be prioritised' stated that it is recommended that teachers integrate outdoor education into the curriculum in an authentic, experiential and enjoyable way for children. Research has found strong correlations between physical motor development and cognitive development. The brain that supports learning is also responsible for physical movement. The prime time for motor development is in the first 12 years of life, beginning with large motor skills such as balancing or walking and moving on to fine motor skills such as drawing.

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Think sidewalk chalk and water fights are all fun and games? Think again. While your kids are having a blast getting wet and being creative, they're also working on those essential fine motor skills. Kids who are learning fine motor tasks-such as printing or buttoning clothing-need to develop strength in their hands, wrists, fingers and forearms as well as hand-eye coordination and an ability to move their fingers independently of one another. There are lots of fun summer activities that do just this-without your kids even realizing that they're working on skill development. Here are our favourites!

8 outdoor activities that develop fine motor skills

1. Popping bubbles: Blow bubbles and challenge your kid to pop them with her index finger. This develops hand-eye coordination and works on finger isolation-the ability to move individual fingers.

2. Playing in the sand: Your kid will naturally be digging in the sand all summer, so you can rest easy knowing that all that manipulating sand between the fingers builds dexterity, and pouring sand from one container to the other gets their forearms moving, which builds strength.

3. Drawing with sidewalk chalk: Any drawing your kid does will help with pencil grasp and hand strength. But the great thing about sidewalk chalk is kids will often lie flat on the ground when using it, which forces them to extend their forearm, building up the strength there too.

4. Squeezing a sponge: Fill up a bucket with water. Give your kid a big sponge, have them dip it in the bucket and then run to another bucket and squeeze the water into it. Repeat until all the water has transferred between buckets. This game works the muscles in the hands and fingers.

5. Painting the sidewalk: Make some sidewalk paint with water, cornstarch and food colouring (get the instructions here). Then give your kid a paintbrush and sit back as he lets his creativity loose. Painting is a great way to get your kiddo's hands and arms used to the motions needed for writing.

6. Swinging on monkey bars: Grasping and hanging from a bar is hard work for fingers, wrists and forearms.

7. Pinning clothes on a line: Get your older kid to help you pin clothes on a line to dry. Squeezing those little clothespins between the thumb and index finger builds finger strength.

8. Water fight: Who doesn't love getting wet on a hot day? Little does your kid know that spraying water out of a bottle or water gun works the muscles in her hands and fingers. No one around to soak? Have your kid give the plants a drink with a spray bottle.

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8 outdoor activities that develop fine motor skills - Cityline

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Think sidewalk chalk and water fights are all fun and games? Think again. While your kids are having a blast getting wet and being creative, they're also working on those essential fine motor skills.

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Preparation for Writing: Developing Fine Motor Skills

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Preparation for Writing: Developing Fine Motor Skills

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This resource provides a detailed outline of activities to engage children in different levels of motor development in preparation for writing. These developmentally appropriate activities can help to build children's whole-arm, whole-hands, pincher and pincer coordination in preparation for learning to write. To understand the term 'developmentally appropriate', it is recommended that teachers know the milestones of their children. This relates to Arnold Gessel's “maturational” perspective on child development. He believed that a child's motor capabilities developed as their central nervous system developed. Thus, his theory, along with parts of McGraw's theory, was called 'neuromaturational'. Gessel also developed the 'Developmental Stages', which were among the first milestone. This is supported by a news article titled '

Developmental Milestones: Motor Development'. Milestones provide a framework for observing and monitoring a child over time. A thorough understanding of the normal or typical sequence of developing fine motor allows professionals to formulate a correct overall impression of a child's true developmental status.

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This web page provides a collection of family-friendly activities that are easy to set up and promotes a whole range of skills. These activities allow the strengthening of fine muscles, practicing of co-ordination and developing eye-hand co-ordination by using simple, everyday materials and a bit of creative fun. This relates to Gunilla Lindqvist's creative pedagogy of play, with its emphasis on the creative quality of play. Lindqvist’s approach to joint adult-child play is a significant contribution because the adult-child joint play of her pedagogy of creative play can potentially benefit children and may potentially benefit adults, both teachers and researchers, as well. This is supported a research paper on how imaginative and creative constructive play, were used to understand more about children's fine and gross motor development. Results were collated and the research has concluded that spending a large amount of time in creative play benefits a child's physical development.

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Here is a collection of 40 fine motor skills activities for young children that are easy to set up and promote a whole range of skills. They're creative, open-ended, appropriate and varied with ideas for practising motor skills through art, sensory play and simple manipulative games, and there are so many to choose from!

One of the most important ways we can help our children while playing with them at home or in a childcare/ classroom setting is through setting up simple activities that help to develop fine motor skills. Young children need to be able to hold and use scissors and pencils appropriately before using them in a classroom context. We cannot expect them to be able to write if they haven't yet developed the strength needed in their hands and fingers.

There are plenty of easy ways to strengthen these muscles, practise co-ordination and develop hand:eye co-ordination using simple, everyday materials and a bit of creative fun! Here are 40 that we have done over the past few years with babies to 5 year olds. There are a million variations you could make from each of these to cater for your own child's particular interests and learning dispositions. Use these as a springboard and pin it for future reference too!

[ Herbal play dough with natural materials to explore]

My personal favourite tool for developing all fine motor skills is the humble ball of homemade play dough. It can be used in SO many ways by adding other combinations of materials to it, and automatically strengthens little hands as they roll, squeeze, twist and build with it. Here is a whole post about the benefits of playing with play dough and a handy guide to starting out with building your own play dough tool kit. Of course, baking with real dough is another wonderful way to play and learn simultaneously!
The many benefits of play dough (and a tool kit)
Other activities we have loved have included exploring sensory play materials, transporting small parts, threading beads, hands-on art projects, cutting and sticking, tearing and scrunching papers, opening and closing fastenings and countless others. Here is a selection of some of those favourites, all of which can be adapted for different age groups and abilities.
Threading with beads onto pipe cleaners Threading, posting and slotting toys for babies and toddlers Poking straws into holes Pasta necklaces Monster play dough Weaving around cardboard Fairy sparkle playdough Pipe cleaners and colanders Beads on spaghetti Hair rollers sticky construction First sewing basket Edible fingerpainting Making marks in fairy dust Decorating play dough eggs Mark making and scooping in lavender sensory salt Building 3D models Sorting and pattern making with shells Patterning with lego Lid posting game Snipping and doodling sticky stained glass windows Whisking up coloured sensory soap Salt dough alphabet modelling Pebble sorting Stacking cups Play dough cupcakes Foam and water window art

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40 Fine Motor Skills Activities - The Imagination Tree

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Here is a collection of 40 fine motor skills activities for young children that are easy to set up and promote a whole range of basic learning skills.

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This resource offers a range of techniques on dictation that teachers can use in their class. Dictation helps a child to build a range of skills, including literacy and abstract thinking abilities while helping to fulfil early learning standards. This relates to Lev Vygotsky's on social-cultural theory. Story dictation provides opportunities for children to engage in communications which enables them to construct vocabulary knowledge, supports their vocabulary acquisition and lexical network building when a theme-based curriculum is used. This is supported by Tanya Christ, Christine Wang and Ming Ming Chiub's research paper on how young children's vocabulary development can be supported through engaging dictation activities. It is recommended that teachers create opportunities for children to apply newly learned vocabulary in meaningful contexts is an important aspect of supporting vocabulary development.

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The Teachers' Room: Dictation activities part 2

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This document has included a variety of approaches to how children can learn vocabulary effectively and apply that knowledge in their writing. It helps them to be able to write more interestingly, and to explain themselves to other people. This relates to Ernst Von Glasersfeld's constructivist approach to learning. He stated that constructivism is an approach to teaching and learning based on the premise that cognition  is the result of "mental construction. For example, children learn by fitting new information together with what they already know. This is supported by a study which had examined the  importance of cognitive factors such as working memory, vocabulary knowledge, general cognitive ability, and reading skills, in accounting for differences in the rate of progress made by children in the development of emergent writing skills.

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This resource offers strategies for enhancing children’s vocabulary development through reading aloud activities and everyday conversations that children have with one another as well as with adults. Engagement in read-aloud would provide an important mechanism by which to
stimulate children’s vocabulary skills. This relates to Jean Piaget's theory on the child’s constant interaction with the outside world. According to Piaget, the child continuously ‘accommodates’ the world by adjusting to meet its demands, and then ‘assimilates’ new situations by working out how any new knowledge fits with what is already understood. A report titled "Parents' views on reading aloud to their children: beyond the early years" offers an insight about how reading aloud supports the development of a range of reading and cognitive skills, provides a valuable opportunity for focused interaction between the adults and children, and enhances children's attitudes toward learning vocabulary.

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101 Ideas For Developing Fine Motor Skills And Hand-Eye Coordination

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101 Ideas For Developing Fine Motor Skills And Hand-Eye Coordination

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This resource provides a list of explicit activities to be carried out with children to develop their eye hand coordination and fine motor skills. This relates to the reflex-to-voluntary behavior model of development concept, which is supported by Wilson P. Tanner, David M. Green, and John A. Swets's signal detection theory, which described children's eyes as receptors to perceive first hand information, that give out signals to the brains, and coordinate with the hands to work together to complete activities mentioned in the document below.

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101 ideas for developing fine motor skills and hand eye coordination

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Under Fine Motor Skills, AppCrayon is our favourite application.