Fine Motor Skills, Visual Function, and Reading in Children

Fine Motor Skills, Visual Function, and Reading in Children

Human Movement Science recently published research examining the association between fine motor skills, visual function, and reading in children. The participants included 19 children who were reading below expected grade and age level.  In order to test whether the children identified with reading difficulties perform worse only on fine motor tasks that rely on binocular input, the researchers used two experimental tasks: bead-threading and peg-board.   Each participant completed tests for stereoacuity, fusional vergence, amplitude of accommodation, and accommodative facility.

The results indicated:

• children with reading difficulties performed significantly worse on the bead-threading task.
• performance on the peg-board task was similar in both groups.
• accommodative facility was the only measure of binocular function significantly associated with motor performance.

The researchers concluded that normal binocular vision may provide an important sensory input for the development of fine motor skills and reading.  Further research was recommended with a larger sample size.

Read more on the link between visual-motor integration and reading.

Reference: Niechwiej-Szwedo, E., Alramis, F., & Christian, L. W. (2017). Association between fine motor skills and binocular visual function in children with reading difficulties. Human movement science, 56(Pt B), 1.

Need fine motor skill activities?  Check out all of our resources here.  Visual perceptual resources?  Find out more here.

 

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Finger Fidget or Finger Warm Up Exercises

Finger Fidget or Finger Warm Up Exercises

Here is a super simple and super cheap do-it-yourself project to make finger fidgets.  These bead finger fidgets can be used to occupy busy hands for wiggly students or to warm up the fingers before fine motor or handwriting activities.  Obviously, do not use these with young children or children who mouth objects because the small beads are a choking hazard.

Supplies needed for the finger fidgets:

• mesh tubing from the craft store (yards of this are super cheap – I paid $3 for 20 yards of the white mesh tubing)
• plastic beads that will fit inside the tubing (I used green pony beads)
• 2 pieces of duct tape or needle and thread

Cut the mesh tubing into a 12″ strip.  Tie a knot in one end.  Slip 4 beads inside the mesh tubing.  Tie off the other end of the tubing to make the length of the finger fidget about 6 inches long.  Duct tape the ends to prevent the tubing from fraying.  You can sew or hot glue the ends if you would prefer.

Have the child slide one bead at a time through the mesh tubing.  Not only is this an excellent fidget it also requires fine motor skills to take only one bead at a time and slide it across the tube.

If you want to make it more difficult of a fine motor task, make the mesh tubing longer.

Watch the Finger Fidget in action –

Need more fidget ideas?  Download the Fidget Spinner Workout, Fidget Spinner Yoga or Dried Bean Stress Balls.

If you need even more ideas for students check out these titles:

Wiggle Worms: A Guide to Alternative Seating for the Classroom digital download which includes all of the resources you need to begin implementing alternative seating strategies in a classroom.  Find out more information.

Cut and Paste Sensory Diet includes 2 sensory diet books, one for home and one for school and over 150 picture word cards to reinforce sensory diets at home and at school.  Find out more information.

 

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Alphabet Playdough Mat – Letter Aa

Alphabet Playdough Mat – Letter Aa

This free letter Aa alphabet play dough mat encourages a multisensory approach to learning the letters.  The black and white letter Aa mat includes an area to make the letter with play dough, visual scan for the letter to cover it up and hide the animal behind the play dough.  The grayscale color is economical to copy for a group of children.  If they choose, they can color the playdough mat first and then laminate it to use over and over again.  No lamination available?  You can put the playdough right on the paper.

Download your FREE LETTER A PLAYDOUGH MAT.

This is from the Creative Clay UPDATED digital download.

These activities encourage tactile and proprioceptive input, fine motor skills, muscle strengthening of the hand and fingers, visual motor skills, visual perceptual skills, math skills and letter formation.  This is a great book for any pediatric occupational therapist – add some new, fun games to your use of clay, make copies to give to teachers or send home activities with your clients.  Most of the pages are in black and white for economical printing and children can color the pages if they wish.  You will need modeling clay, resistive clay or playdoh to do activities.  This does not include any clay only the download of activities.  Laminate the play clay mats for durability.

This is a digital document that includes the materials to create the following:

• 16 ways to use play dough cards  – each photo card is 1/2 page or you can print smaller cards 8 to a page.  Perfect to laminate and place in a play dough station to encourage various ways to manipulate play dough.  The cards are in color but easily print grayscale.  
• 8 play clay mats – black and white mats to encourage finger strengthening, counting and more.
• 26 alphabet mats – black and white mats for all the letters A to Z.  Make the letter, find and cover the letters and cover the animal.
• Ten frame mats – black and white 1-10 number mats: count and name shapes, make the number and complete the ten frame.

Find out more.

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10 Finger Games to Play

Are you ever looking for finger games to play with just your hands?  All pediatric therapists love a good game that requires no equipment right? They are great to play to practice finger isolation, timing and dexterity.  Try using the games as a warm up activity for handwriting tasks or fine motor skill practice.  Here are 10 finger games to play that require no equipment or preparation:

ORIGINAL ROCK PAPER SCISSORS – So we all know the usual rules – Rock smashes Scissors – Scissors Cut Paper – Paper covers Rock. On the count of three, you put on your hand as a rock (fist), scissors (two fingers open) or paper (hand flat) and then determine a winner. It can be one and done or best out of 3 trials.

ROCK PAPER SCISSORS BET – Try making a game out of it. If you lose, you have to perform some physical activity. Maybe the loser has to do 10 jumping jacks, push ups or climb the stairs. Or maybe you can agree that the loser has to do you a favor within reason.

ELEPHANT CAT MICE – Try changing up the characters. Elephants stomp on cats, cats chase mice and mice scare elephants. On the count of three, either place both hands forward in a fist like elephant feet, fingers like they are scratching like a cat or wiggle your finger for a mouse tail.

ODD AND EVENS – Face each other about one foot apart.  Place one chair, piece of tape or any object 10 feet behind each player.  One player is odds, the other player is evens.  Players put their hands behind their back.  They say once, twice, three shoot and bring their hands around front showing either one finger or two fingers.  Add the fingers up of both players.  If it is an even number, the player who is evens stays in place.  The odd player takes one step back.  Repeat the game.  The first player that steps 10 feet back to the chair is the loser.

SHADOW PUPPETS – Take a light to shine on the wall or go back a window where the sun is coming in.  Practice making shadow puppets on the wall using just your hands.

HAND CLAPPING GAMES – Hand clapping games are awesome for finger dexterity, timing and motor planning.  Teach a child Miss Mary Mack or check out some You Tube videos to learn some new hand clapping games.

FINGERPLAY SONGS – Practice the Itsy Bitsy Spider, Five Little Monkeys, Little Bunny Foo Foo or check out the Fantastic Fingers Fine Motor Program for many fingerplay songs and games.

FIVE FUN FACTS – Hold up your thumb, and squeeze it with your other hand and state a fun fact about yourself (or another person can state a fun fact or compliment about you).  Hold out only your index finger, squeeze it with your other hand and state fact #2.  And so on moving through and squeezing each finger.

FIVE WORDS – Pick a word.  Start on your thumb, squeeze it and state a word associated with the main word.  Move on to your index finger and so on.  Similar to a game of Categories but using your fingers.

FINGER MEMORY – Player one starts and show one move with his/her fingers i.e. thumbs up.  Player two repeats thumbs up and adds his/her own move i.e. fist.  Player one now repeats – thumbs up, fist and adds a move.  Continue play until someone doesn’t remember a move.

If you need more activities to play with no equipment check out 25 Instant Sensory Motor Group Activities and Imagination Action Journeys.

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Pumpkin Workout and Brain Break

Need a quick brain break in the classroom or burn off some excess energy before homework?  Try this no-prep, pumpkin workout!  Can you complete each exercise for the letters in the word P-U-M-P-K-I-N?

P is for 10 push ups.
U is for 10 up and down squats.
M is for marching in place for 30 seconds.
P is for plank position for 10 seconds.
K is for kick your legs for 30 seconds.
I is for invent an exercise.
N is for ninety seconds of running in place.

DOWNLOAD the Pumpkin Workout.

The Pumpkin Workout is from this Pumpkin Packet that includes 11 no-prep, FUN activities to get children practicing fine motor, gross motor and visual perceptual skills.  This packet is great for brain breaks, indoor recess, classroom party and more!

The Pumpkin Packet download includes the following:

Roll a Pumpkin #1 and #2 – roll a die to create different pumpkin faces
Pumpkin Workout – an acrostic poem for physical activity
Pumpkin Brain Breaks – roll a die and get moving
Pumpkin Ball Challenge – exercise ball activities
Pumpkin Poses – animal yoga poses
Pumpkin Patch – fine motor and visual motor game
Pumpkin Match Up – fine motor, finger strengthening and visual memory game
Design Your Own Pumpkin – visual motor activity
Pumpkin Zentangle Coloring Page
Jack O Lantern Challenge Maze
Pumpkin Maze

FIND OUT MORE INFORMATION.

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Butterflies, Bugs and Blocks Mini Puzzles

Print this Butterfly, Bugs and Blocks freebie to practice fine motor, visual motor, visual closure and visual discrimination skills.  You can download the freebie at Your Therapy Source Inc.

Need more building block ideas?  Check out the freebies and download with Building Block Patterns and Games.

Spring Time Egg Freebie

Here is a one page FREE download to print for three different Spring time egg activities.  You can print the page(s) and use to create a matching game, hidden eggs game or scissor practice.

Print and make a matching game.

Print, cut out the eggs and laminate.  Hide them in play dough or a sensory bin.

Cut the egg page into 6 strips.  The child can practice cutting the eggs apart.  

Download your copy from Your Therapy Source.

Sensory Motor Activities for Spring is loaded with  fun, creative electronic book with over 30 ideas for sensory motor activities relating to springtime including printables! FIND OUT MORE AT http://www.yourtherapysource.com/springactivities.html

Visual Perceptual Clothes Pin Games

I am so excited about this new download, Visual Perceptual Clothes Pin Games, that combines visual perceptual skills, hand strengthening and play skills.

The first game is the Dinosaur Shadow Game.  It includes four different dinosaurs to pin your clothes pins on if your dinosaur matches the shadow on the board game.

The next game is the Number Line Clothes Pin Game.  Move along the board game, using your clothes pin to either add or subtract numbers.

This is the Clothes Line Sock Game.  Cut apart the cards and see who can get all their clothes pins on the sock clothes line first!

The last game is the Clothes Pin Spider Game.  Match up numbers, colors or facial expressions to get the 8 legs on the spider.

FIND OUT MORE INFORMATION about the Visual Perceptual Clothes Pin Games download.

Colored Caps - Fine Motor and Visual Spatial Activity

I happen to love colored dots and index cards so this activity is a win-win for me!  Plus it is super simple to set up, lightweight and small to toss into the therapy bag and can be modified in so many different ways.  

So all you need to do is start off with some blank index cards and draw a grid.  You can do a 2×2 grid to keep it simple or make the grid larger to make it more challenging.  

Take some recycled water bottle caps and place some colored stickers on the inside to make the colored caps.  Now put some stickers on one side on the grid.  

Give an index card to the child and he/she needs to match the colored cap on the other side of the grid.  You can turn the index card so sometimes the student is matching the dots from side to side and sometimes from top to bottom.

To modify this activity you could have the child use dot markers to match the colored sticker dots, peel and stick more colored dot stickers or draw colored circles.

You could change it up entirely with other more complex shapes or stickers.  If you want to use larger stickers use full size paper and recycled milk jug tops.  

Here is gross motor and fine motor activity using colored dot stickers– http://yourtherapysource.com/blog1/2014/03/13/gross-motor-and-fine-motor-activity-using-colored-dot-stickers/

Dot Phonics Mazes – Follow the dot path from the letter to the correct word that starts with that letter. There are 26 mazes each on half a page. There are also 8 different examples of how to differentiate the lesson such as using stickers, using dot markers coloring in the larger versus the smaller circles, pushing golf tees through the circles and more. This is a great activity for 
push in therapy ideas or for centers.  FIND OUT MORE.

Snowstorm Fine Motor and Oral Motor Activity

Here is a fun fine motor and oral motor craft to create.  You can download the snowman templates from Your Therapy Source.

Step 1:  Choose a snowman picture to print – large plastic bag color picture, small plastic bag color picture, large black and white coloring page, small black and white coloring page.  Color in the picture if you choose the black and white pages.

Step 2:  Cut out the snowman picture.

Step 3:  Put the picture inside the correct size plastic bag.

Step 4:  Using the fingertips, break apart some styrofoam (it must be styrofoam – tissue paper and confetti is too heavy).  Put the styrofoam in the plastic bag.

Step 5:  Put a straw into the plastic bag.  Close the seal at the top of the plastic bag all the way across leaving the straw sticking out of the bag.

Step 6:  Blow air into the straw causing the styrofoam to look like a snowstorm.

Watch the snowstorm in action below.

Need more snowman activities?  Check out this previous blogpost on 5 FREE SNOWMAN PRINTABLES.

Winter Step By Step Projects: This is an electronic book with 10 step by step shape winter themed projects.  Each shape project includes simple step by step directions, color shape templates and black and white shape templates.   This is a super activity to encourage fine motor, visual motor, visual perceptual and sequencing skills.  Also, included is several suggestions for modifying the projects.  The 10 projects are penguin, polar bear, reindeer, winter scene, winter clothes, snowman, snowman family, ice skates, mittens and snow globe.

FIND OUT MORE AT http://yourtherapysource.com/winterstep.html

Simple Candy Cane Craft

After seeing this craft from Highlights, I thought it looked like a wonderful visual and fine motor activity.  I created a template so that you can get started right away.  You can download the template at YourTherapySource or http://www.YourTherapySource.com/videocandycane.  Watch the video below.

8 Free Fall Themed Fine, Gross and Visual Motor Activities

Here are 8 free printables for fine motor, gross motor and visual perceptual activities with a Fall theme.

1.  Leaf Animals – Print and create some leaf animals to practice fine motor skills.  Download here  http://www.yourtherapysource.com/fmfallfree.html
2. Pumpkin Patch Fine Motor Game – download here http://www.yourtherapysource.com/freepumpkinpatch.html
3. Handwriting Hunt for Autumn – getting moving and writing with this activity.  Download here http://yourtherapysource.com/hwhuntsfallfree.html
4. Fall Handwriting Practice – Download the Free Fall Handwriting Practice pages –
   double line and dotted line styles – http://www.yourtherapysource.com/freefallhw.html
5. Falling Leaves– practice fine motor, gross motor, balance and coordination skills with this activity.  Download here http://www.yourtherapysource.com/fallingleaves.html
6. Fall Handwriting Words, Lined Paper and Football Visual Motor Task – download here http://www.yourtherapysource.com/files/Fall_free_sample.pdf
7. Pumpkin Multisensory Handwriting Page – download here http://www.yourtherapysource.com/msfallfree.html
8. Raking Maze to practice visual motor, visual spatial and motor planning skills.  Download here http://www.yourtherapysource.com/vpfallfreebie.html

Simple Shape Turkey

After seeing this craft over at Toddler Approved, I figured this would be perfect for little fingers to work on scissor skills, shape identification and simple drawing skills.

We started out by cutting out a circle and some colorful shapes from construction paper.  We glued the shapes into the white circle.



Next, cut out a simple turkey body shape and glue that on top of the turkey "feathers".



This child choose to draw some eyes, a nose and a smile.  You could add a orange triangle and google eyes.



And here you have the finished product -



 

Need some movement to go with that Turkey?  Check out Thanksgiving Brain Breaks.



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Pipe Cleaners and Straws

Here are three fun, unique fine and visual motor activities using pipe cleaners and straws.  Start by having the child cut up straws and some pipe cleaners into smaller pieces.

1. Alphabet:  The straws are the straight lines of letters and the pipe cleaners are the curves.

2.  Modern Colander Art: Stick pipe cleaners into the colander and lace the cut up straws onto the pipe cleaners.

3.  Shapes:  Insert small pipe cleaner pieces into the straws and connect them to make different shapes.  Have fun creating abstract 3D shapes.

Do you have any other suggestions to add?

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Flower Fine Motor Activities for Spring

Here are three different ideas using the same materials to encourage fine motor skills.  To find out how to make the activities go to Your Therapy Source at http://www.YourTherapySource.com/freeflowers

Research on a Collaborative Fine Motor Program

Ingrid King, OT, has written research on a collaborative fine motor program for 5 year old children in New Zealand.  A two phased mixed method design was utilized with 19 students in a 5 year old classroom (none of the students were receiving occupational therapy nor had a diagnosis).  To measure changes in fine motor skills a group pre- and post-test was performed.  A five year follow up study was completed to determine the teacher's perceptions.  The intervention consisted of a fine motor program for the entire class led by the occupational therapist (which were then repeated by the teaching staff) one time per week for 8 weeks.  Following the first 8 weeks, an additional fine motor program was completed for 12 weeks for only 6 of the students.  

The results indicated the following:

• a significant difference was found in the groups fine motor performance following the the collaborative teaching training


• the teacher continued to use the knowledge and activities after the training was complete.

You can read the entire study here http://docs.com/ZH6H.  Find out more about the fine motor program used for the study at www.myfantasticfingers.com

Reference:  King, I. Then and Now: Addressing Young Students' Fine Motor Needs Through a Collaborative Modelling Teacher Training Intervention.  Copyright 2014. Ingrid C. King www.myfantasticfingers.com

 



Need other ideas for a collaborative approach to school based occupational therapy?  Check out the Coleman Curriculum for School Based Occupational Therapy at http://yourtherapysource.com/coleman.html

 

4 FREE Valentine's Day Printables for OT and PT

Here are 4 free last minute printables for OT and PT to help celebrate Valentine's Day.

1.  Valentine's Day Brain Break

2.  Conversation Heart Clothes Pins

3.  Multisensory Handwriting Freebie - Valentine's Day

4.  Valentine Pencil Critters to cut, fold and create.

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone!!!!

Dot Phonics Fine motor and Visual Motor Mazes Free Sample Page

Download a free sample page for the letters Y and Z to challenge phonemic awareness, fine motor and visual motor skills.  When you download the free sample page there are also 8 different suggestions of how to differentiate the lesson based on the child's abilities.  You can download the sample pages and ideas at    http://www.yourtherapysource.com/dotphonicsfreebie.html

Fine Motor Bean Matching Boards

Print out the matching bean boards and read the directions to create this fine motor, visual perceptual and graded muscle control challenge.  Modifications included to add in physical activity to the task.  You can read about it and download the matching boards for free at http://www.yourtherapysource.com/freebeans.html

Visual Memory and Fine Motor Box

Watch the video on how to create this visual memory and fine motor box at http://yourtherapysource.com/videovisualmemory.html.