Fine Motor in the Early Years

In the early years, offer a variety of activities that encourage:

FUN exploration
a sense of curiosity
and many opportunities to develop hand and finger skills

Pre-Printing Strokes

Children need to develop pre-printing strokes before they are able to print. Pre-printing emerges as development in several different areas unfold.

We need:

Gross motor development - to support the body so one can color and draw
Visual development - convergence and divergence of the eyes and coordinated ocular movements, as well as visual acuity are required.
Fine motor development - in order to hold and control the drawing tools, as well as apply pressure through the tool

Pencil Grasp Development

Children will frequently explore a variety of grasp patterns while their pencil skills develop. and while continuing to develop hand preference and gross motor control.

Your child may demonstrate one of the below pencils grasps, or a variation of one. They may utilize several grasp patterns during one coloring activity and may even switch hands to control the crayons or tools provided. This completely normal while development is occurring. Continue to provide lots of opportunity for fine motor development and creative opportunities with crayons, paint brushes and other expressive art medias.

Scissor Skill Development

Scissor skills require the skilled use of both hands working together. Each hand takes on a different job, but they must work cooperatively.

The skill progression of scissor skill includes

ripping or tearing paper
snipping with an open and closing of scissors
cutting with some forward movement
cutting short straight lines
emergence of control to cut gentle curves
ability to cut simple shapes i.e a circle
abilty to cut shapes with corners and zig zags

Feeling worried about giving your child scissors?

Provide fun opportunities where special time is reserved with you and your child to explore fun scissor activities
Make a "cutting bin" with acceptable items for appropriate scissor curiosity
Do review the expectations and responsibility of being a scissor user. 1/ no cutting hair, or curtains! 2/ only use scissors at the table or agreed upon spaces 3/ practice how to hold the blades when walking across the room with scissors- no running!

Scissor Skill Progression

Encourage :

Non-scissor activities that require a similar motor plan. i.e. using puppets in an open and close pattern to support the motor plan of scissors - have the puppet eat the bubbles to make it a game!
Other items to support scissor skill development include using a single hole punch, and tongs.
Encourage play which requires the children to use both hands together. i.e reeling a fishing rod , using a hand held and hand turn mixer.