Category Archives: Fine Motor

Fine Motor Tools for Academic Instruction

November 16, 2020Fine MotorGuest Blogger

by Moira P. Bushell OTD, MEd, OTR/L

With academic demands increasing in the school setting, student’s free time is decreasing and teachers try to create activities and stations for children to practice specific academic skills during class time. Occupational therapy practitioners have an expertise in creating innovative interventions that combine fine motor development activities with academic skill development.

Here is a list of some simple fine motor activity ideas that can be used to support academic learning within the classroom environment. If you get creative you can come up with several ways to mix and match items to multiply the possibilities. Remember to share with your teachers.

1. Letter Names

Playdoh letter formation
Cryptograms
Wikki Stix
Stickers
Hole punching letters
Matching on cards using clothespins

2. Spelling

Letter tiles to match words
Alphabet Stamps
Letter beads on pipe cleaners
Stacking Legos, Blocks, Unifix cubes with letters on it to make words
Catching and spelling letters
Velcro letters

3. Number Recognition

Using tongs to count items and match to a number
Dice games
Using a sand tray to write numbers
Puzzles
Searching for items in rice bin and match to number cards

4. Addition

Making math equations with beads on pipe cleaners
Creating a 10 frame out of egg carton
Stacking blocks to create patterns
Putting counters into slotted containers

BONUS!

Adapting many of these to remote learning is pretty easy. You can even host a scavenger hunt for the students to search their house to gather materials to create kits

The options for integrating fine motor activities into academic instruction creatively is limitless. I’m hoping i’ve listed a new one here for you to try with your students.

Creative Uses for the Elevated Writing Surface, Handwriting Tools and Positioning Cushions

March 12, 2018Fine Motor, Handwriting, Occupational Therapy, UncategorizedGuest Blogger

by Shoshanah Shear

Handwriting and writing position are often discussed in a school setting but what about our other clients. Let us consider a patient who is in hospital. Enabling a patient to engage in drawing, art, a pre-writing task, or writing itself following an illness or injury is invaluable. However, it can be a challenge to provide the necessary angle for a writing surface when working at the bedside. Some hospital-based OT departments have a table surface that adjusts in height as well as the angle of the writing surface. But such equipment is not always available or, if it is, there are times that a portable version is preferable.

The various slanted writing surfaces available through Therapro offer the solution. I particularly love the Collapsible Writing Surface. It opens the door to varying both the activity used in treatment as well as the location for the session.

Imagine for a moment a patient in an orthopedic ward following an MVA. The patient has multiple fractures with exoskeleton / P.O.P. and is depressed and uncooperative with all staff members. After persuading the doctor to refer to OT, a brief history reveals that the patient is an artist and the thought of not being able to draw is what depresses them enough to interfere with function on all levels.

As an OT, we can build up the grips of a pencil or paint brush. Another option to easing use of writing implement is through Triangular Crayons and Pencil Crayons. Triangular writing implements can also enable a patient of this nature to return to drawing by easing the demands of the small muscles in the hand. Although strengthening these muscles will be important, the first step might be to encourage return to meaningful activity, hence the need for an easier means of holding the writing or drawing implement.

Using the portable, collapsible slanted writing surface or easel, one can now take the patient out of the ward (whether on a trolley or in a wheelchair) and into either the OT department or, better still, the garden. A change of environment does wonders for the patient psychologically, not to mention the hope offered by enabling an artist to return to what they love best – drawing, painting or creating. Many artists gain inspiration from nature, hence being able to get into the garden can literally be a breath of fresh air that instills a desire to regain function.

Through this brief example, we can see that writing and being involved in creative pursuits is a necessary skill and activity for various age groups and types of clients, not only for children at school. The tools and equipment that are beneficial in the classroom can be equally important in a hospital or other setting.

The write slant boards or Better Board Slant Boards are also of benefit to:

a woman who is expecting and is placed on bedrest.
the elderly who has limited space due to downsizing and increasing need to take care of their backs. The fact that the slant boards are light and collapsable makes handling and storage easy for an older person.

Still related to positioning, two cushions that I have used quite often in my practice are the Disc‘O’Sit and the Movin’ Sit Air Cushion. I love the fact that they are portable and adjustable in terms of air pressure. This makes it possible to take these cushions to a treatment or evaluation in a home or workplace.

One group of clients I have found to benefit from these cushions is a pregnant woman who is experiencing lower back pain. Pregnancy related lower back pain is a common complaint which can be alleviated with appropriate exercise and positioning.

Shoshanah Shear

Occupational Therapist, healing facilitator, certified infant massage instructor, freelance writer, author of “Healing Your Life Through Activity – An Occupational Therapist’s Story” and co-author of “Tuvia Finds His Freedom”.

Teaching Utensil Use Outside of the Mealtime Experience

January 11, 2018Feeding Therapy, Fine Motor, Life SkillsGuest Blogger

It seems as natural as can be; use a child’s meals and snack times as opportunities to teach them how to hold and control their fork or spoon. In this atmosphere of “least restrictive environment” and push-in treatment, this sounds like a great plan for your therapy session.

Although it seems like a good idea, there are circumstances in which separating utensil use from food consumption, at least initially, can be more effective in treatment:

Children with tactile aversions and oral sensitivity may find combining manual and intra-oral exploration to be too overwhelming.
Children with both motor and sensory issues may find that they cannot work on practicing multiple skills at the same time.
Children with behavior issues can be faced with a difficult situation: they want to eat and they want to exert control over their body or an adult’s behavior.
Kids with minimal endurance or tolerance can lack the ability to complete a meal, leaving them dependent on adults or frustrated with their fatigue or a sense of failure.

Teaching utensil use without the expectation of food ingestion can solve these problems. As skills and tolerance grow, the two experiences can be joined successfully. Here are some suggestions to make practice effective and weave it back into functional experience as seamlessly as possible:

Have the child feed an adult using child-friendly utensils and foods. A child may decide to take a bite instead of feeding the adult, so a food’s size and texture should be safe for the child’s developmental level.

Playfully scooping and piercing non-food objects such as non-edible dough with utensils and other “real” tableware may extend practice sessions while decreasing the stress of multi-sensory exposure with food.

Watching the therapist eat food that the child has prepared or served with utensils reinforces the social and nurturing aspects of meal preparation and eating.
Using strategies such as backward chaining or graded exposure, activities that begin by separating utensil use from eating can become more like a typical mealtime experience over time. When children are given a “just-right” level of challenge, they make faster progress with ease.

Cathy Collyer, OTR, LMT, PLLC

Cathy Collyer, OTR, LMT has treated children with neurological, orthopedic and sensory processing disorders for over 20 years. She is the author of The Practical Guide To Toilet Training Your Child With Low Muscle Tone. Learn more about her work at tranquilbabies.com.