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When you hear the term “fine motor skills”, we often think of Occupational Therapists. The OTs in our school buildings are instrumental in helping students build fine motor skills, as well as a HUGE variety of other skills that are essential for school and life success.
The thing about OT is, kids have to demonstrate a need and qualify for services. When a child does not qualify for services, that does not necessarily mean that they don’t need support with their fine motor skills! Also, unless you have a very unique and super in-tune school district, you probably don’t have an OT in your room all day. Even if you have kids receiving OT services, they require fine motor skills during the day when they’re not with the OT.
So, how can we target fine motor skills in the classroom? There are endless fun options, and here’s just a few!
Sensory bins
Sensory bins are not new or unique supports, but they have a special way of providing motivation, academic opportunities, and even fine motor skills in a meaningful way. I like using tools like tweezers and small shovels as ways to work on grip, finger, and wrist control. I also love making sensory bins both academic and fine motor based. This can be done by adding blocks with letters or numbers, magnetic letters or numbers, laminated cards (etc) into a bin of filler. This could be dried beans, dried rice, water beads, dried lentils, shredded paper (etc). Students will use their pincer grasp to pull the pieces out of the filler and complete an activity.
Sorting with tongs
Using plastic tongs are perfect for improving finger strength and dexterity! There are SO many fun, pre-made activities that require fine motor skills like pincer grasp and/or tong use to sort the small pieces. Here are a few of my favorites:
Playdough on pencil
Handwriting is one of the main motivators for focusing on fine motor skills in the classroom. If you have pre-writers in your classroom or students who have handwriting you can’t currently read, it makes sense to choose this as a focus area. There are so many tools out there for handwriting, from special paper, to slanted boards, to pencil grips, weighted pencils, and more. Be sure to consult with the OT to see what your student can benefit from most. One of the simplest hacks I know is to use playdough AS a pencil grip! It shows students where to hold the pencil, and molds nicely to the students fingers.
Highlighters
It can be hard to have everything prepped, fully differentiated, and ready for every single activity you do across the day. I ALWAYS have highlighters on hand as quick accommodation for students. Highlighters can be used as a base for students to trace over, a way to show which area you want their writing to be in, a cue for the bottom and top of a writing line, and more. They are bold and easy to see, while still being transparent and fairly non distracting. The best combo!
How do you focus on fine motor skills in your classroom?
