Fine motor skills are abilities to control and coordinate the small muscles in the hand for precise movements. The development of children\u2019s fine motor skills are important because they are the foundation for the development of many other important skills in the future, including reading, writing, and drawing, as well as the ability to undertake everyday tasks such as tying shoelaces or holding a knife and fork. There are many components of fine motor skills including the following:<\/p>\n
Children require adequate muscle strength in their hands and arms, in order to effectively use them for fine motor tasks. \u2013 Just as a body builder needs to train in order to lift that dumbbell, children need to train their hand and arm muscles in order to build the quality of their movement, as well as their endurance levels.<\/p>\n
The ability to freely open and close the hand in order to grip and let go of objects when needed. \u2013 It requires coordinated finger movements and shaping of the hand to use different grasps to pick up and hold objects of different sizes and shapes. \u2013 An efficient pencil grasp requires the ability to move fingers in isolation of each other, adequate hand strength and good wrist stability.<\/p>\n
The ability to use both hands together in a coordinated way, such as when manipulating an object. \u2013 It develops early in a child\u2019s life when they are observed to hold objects with two hands. \u2013 Each side of the body must be aware of what the other side is doing in order to cooperate and complete a task. It is a \u2018doing\/helping relationship\u2019 \u2013one hand does most of the task and the other helps out. \u2013 It is important for activities such as throwing and catching a ball and cutting skills.<\/p>\n
The ability to use the eyes and the hands together to complete a task. \u2013 The child guides hand movements with their eyes to accurately manipulate objects and place them in specific positions (i.e. Putting block on top of tower without knocking all the other blocks off) Crossing the midline \u2013 The ability to use arms, legs and eyes across the midline of the body. (MIDLINE = imaginary line drawn vertically dividing the body into two equal parts). \u2013 It is essential for activities such as handwriting and using scissors.<\/p>\n
In hand manipulation is the process of moving objects that are already in the hand. It determines how effective and efficiently a child can coordinate the hand and fingers to complete fine motor tasks. \u2013 It is important for tasks such as handwriting, holding money and scissor skills.<\/p>\n
Hand dominance is the consistent favoring of one hand over the other for the skilled part of an activity. For example, the dominant hand holds and uses a pencil whilst the other hand stabilizes the paper.
\nHand dominance usually starts to develop between 2-4 years, however it is common at this stage for children to swap hands. Between the ages of 4 to 6 years a clear hand preference is usually established.<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fine motor skills are abilities to control and coordinate the small muscles in the hand for precise movements. The development of children\u2019s fine motor skills are important because they are the foundation for the development of many other important skills in the future, including reading, writing, and drawing, as well as the ability to undertake […]<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"author":2,"featured_media":938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/1022.acandakids.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/fine-motor.jpg","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"link","format":"url"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1022.acandakids.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1022.acandakids.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1022.acandakids.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1022.acandakids.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1022.acandakids.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1022.acandakids.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1022.acandakids.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1022.acandakids.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1022.acandakids.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1022.acandakids.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}