It is really important that your children continue to exercise their whole bodies

whilst at home- including hands and fingers (not just thumbs and forefingers!)

For those of you whose children are learning or are struggling with their handwriting, strengthening their core muscles and balance is just as key as strengthening hands and fingers

Here are 6 important things a child learns when developing fine motor skills:

1) It helps children perform crucial tasks like reaching, grasping, and moving objects. Without fine motor skills, we can't do the simple things like button or zip a jacket, turning pages in a book, or sign our names on important documents.

2) Through fine motor skill development, children learn to use tools like crayons, chalk, pencils, and scissors.  

3) Hand-eye coordination improves as fine motor skills improve. Without hand-eye coordination, we wouldn't be able to sew, drive a car, wash our hair, drink from a cup, put our shoes on, hit a ball with a bat or simply reach for the object we want 

4) Fine motor skills help kids learn and develop handwriting and drawing skills. They help hone in on strengthening those small muscles!  

5) Children become more independent and understand how their bodies work.  They can manage better self-care like brushing their own hair, teeth, dressing themselves, going to the toilet and washing their hands. They understand that picking up a pencil and holding it properly helps them have better strokes when writing a story or drawing and manipulate the way a scissor cuts paper by turning their hand or wrist a certain way.

6) As children grow in their fine-motor skills, their self-esteem grows too.

I have attached a set of Fine Motor activity cards for you to build into your home learning schedules for your children. Also, the following link is to an Occupational Therapist who is running daily online sessions too!

https://www.griffinot.com/developing-childrens-fine-motor-skills/fine-motor-activities-with-kim-griffinot/