Chances are if I’m sharing content, whether it’s on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or an email, you can bet that I’ll be mentioning the words “fine motor skills.
I talk about it so much because it’s a super duper important skill that often gets overlooked.
You see, after 20 years of teaching, I’ve come to understand that it gets overlooked not because it’s hard to teach kids, but because parents just don’t really know about it. AND if they are aware, it’s typically a question of “What else can I do?”
Before I go any further, let me briefly explain what Fine Motor Skills refers to.
Any motion that is related to the fingers and hands of your little ones is working fine motor development. The muscles in their little hands and fingers must be strengthened before they can use them successfully and easily. The more opportunities you can provide and expose your kids to, the stronger the muscles, coordination, and ability to maneuver basic things like food, toys, crayons, and scissors. Strong fingers and hands lead to dressing, zipping, buttoning, tying shoes, and of course writing. Your little ones can never have enough practice and exposure to fine motor activities.
The moment your baby is born they are beginning to develop those muscles. When your baby grabs your finger for the first time and hangs on for dear life, they are learning how to open and close, or squeeze, and release. Reaching, grabbing, batting or swiping, and moving objects from one hand to the other are all part of the early stages of development for fine motor skills.
As your child continues to be exposed to an array of opportunities for practice, they will display more precise finger and hand movements and coordination. It’s important to understand that it takes SO MUCH practice for their little muscles to develop what’s referred to as “muscle memory”. Having really good muscle memory would be when a 4 year old is adept at cutting. It was always very obvious in the classroom what students had had lots of exposure to fine motor development and which kids didn’t.
When you think about “toys”, be intentional about opportunities for manipulating objects, putting things in and taking them out, pouring, turning knobs, lacing, tearing, and anything that requires the use of their fingers and hands.
One more quick mention…..I love allowing kids to explore, problem solve, and figure things out for themselves, there is so much value in that. However, sometimes our little ones need to be explicitly taught how to do something. In the classroom we used what was called “The Gradual Release Model” or “I do”, “We do”, and “You do”. Meaning…..first I will do it and show you how. Then we will do it together and then finally you will do it successfully on your own. That release model often takes repetition of the “I do” and “We do” before your child is confident in the “You do”. Be sure to allow for lots of modeling, patience, and guidance.
So next time you hear me mention “fine motor”, which you can be confident will be soon, you will know exactly what I am talking about!
