Fine motor skills

Right from birth your baby is learning how to use her smaller muscles. Help her with this task, in these ways.

WITHOUT FINE MOTOR skills, you wouldn’t be able to write, use a knife and fork, or play the piano. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Every day you successfully execute hundreds of movements using the smallest muscles in your body.

The way the muscles in your hands, fingers, wrists, toes, eyes and even your tongue work together to allow you to complete fine tasks accurately is known as your fine motor skills. Children need this ability. They use their fine motor skills to manipulate objects and tools and to explore their world. Their fine motor skills eventually influence even their intelligence. Gross motor skills, which are developed by climbing, crawling, running, jumping and hanging, form the basis for the development of fine motor skills. These skills are developed in conjunction with one another, so it’s no use stimulating your child’s fine motor capabilities if her gross motor skills are neglected.

For drawing, your child needs the small muscles in her hand so she can grip the pencil correctly. But even if her small muscles are well developed, she needs strong arm and even back muscles so she can sit upright. Without this ability she’ll struggle to keep her hand stable enough to draw accurately.

THE FIRST YEAR

Your newborn’s hands are balled up into fists and only occasionally enter her field of vision. When she does see her hands, she has no idea as yet what they are! As her grasping reflex fades, her fists will begin to relax. Soon she’ll be able to move her hands to her mouth, and so starts a new voyage of discovery. By the age of three months, a baby’s brain will be able to connect what she touches with what she sees, and she will start deliberately trying to touch interesting things. As she does not yet have enough control over her body to succeed, she’ll look like she’s wildly flailing her arms and will only randomly touch the object. Between four and six months old, she develops the ability intentionally to grasp and grab an object, and in the following two months she’ll focus on exploring everything around her with her eyes, hands and mouth. She can hold objects in two hands and bang them together, or move an item from one hand into the other.

She’ll also start intentionally letting go of and dropping objects. By ten months old this ability will be well established. Now look forward to the fun game of “Mom retrieves everything I drop, over and over and over again”. It’s a hoot.

Objects are now studied intensely. The pincer grip starts developing and soon your clever baby can pick up small objects between thumb and forefinger instead of using her whole hand to rake it closer.

By one year of age your little one should be able to pick up even the smallest breadcrumb from the floor using her pincer grip. HOW YOU CAN HELP

■ Give your baby plenty of opportunity to practise reaching for objects, first while she’s lying on her back, and later during tummy time and finally while sitting.

■ Hold an item your baby wants near the middle of her body so that she can reach for it with both hands, move it from hand to hand, and bang objects together.

■ Provide containers into which your baby can drop the things she’s holding.

■ Provide smaller objects which she can hold using her fingertips.

■ Offer finger foods.

■ Invest in a musical toy with a pullstring mechanism.

■ Good toys are entertaining as well as educational. Invest in: rattles, wooden building blocks in different sizes, a sandpit, toys to push and pull, beanfilled glass jars for making music, bath toys, your entire kitchen collection of plastic containers and lids, wooden and metal spoons, musical instruments such as a drum, and all sorts of balls.

THE SECOND YEAR

Your mini-genius can now hold a crayon (using the entire hand) and will start trying to draw a straight horizontal line. She enjoys watching moving objects, especially circular motions, and she practises her pincer grip all the time. She can use the shape sorter well, and can stack a few blocks on top of one another.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

■ Offer your toddler plenty of opportunity to scribble, against horizontal and vertical surfaces.

■ Let your child empty and repack drawers and open and close containers.

■ Build block towers together.

■ Play ball games.

■ Challenge your toddler to trace lines you’ve drawn on paper.

■ Playdough, playdough, playdough (See the recipe on page 50).

■ Build four- or five-piece puzzles.

■ Recite finger rhymes like Tom Thumb.

■ Encourage your child to help getting herself dressed by attempting buttons or zips herself.

Clever toys to invest in include: push-and-pull toys, hoops, a tea set, a toy phone, construction toys (Duplo), wooden blocks, simple puzzles (the kind with knobs that sit in a recessed board), musical instruments, toy tools such as a hammer for hitting, crayons and paper, clipboard with large clips, shape sorters, threading toys.

THE THIRD YEAR

Your child is so advanced by now she can feed herself and drink from her own cup (at least without spilling all of the water). She can build easy puzzles and can form playdough into shapes. She can thread plastic beads onto string, and she can build a bridge using two parallel blocks with a third laid over them. She is starting to cut with scissors, although she may hold them with two hands for now. She can draw a circle and her pencil grip keeps improving.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

■ Let her colour in large shapes.

■ Let her try to cut different textures with scissors, such as newspaper, toilet paper and foil.

■ Let her build towers and lines on the floor with her building blocks.

■ Let her thread macaroni or large baubles on to knitting wool or string.

■ Paste large sheets of paper onto a wall and allow her to draw or paint.

■ Make sand art in the sandpit using sticks, feathers and straws.

■ Allow her to wind an alarm clock or wind-up toy.

■ Give her a large sheet of paper for fingerpainting.

If your child is struggling with sitting still long enough to complete these fine motor activities, chop and change them up regularly. As your child ages her concentration span will improve.

THE FOURTH YEAR

Your child is able to draw faces and by four years old she can draw a human form. She’s constantly improving with getting dressed and she can do up bigger buttons all by herself. Her cutting-out is improving, likewise her pencil grip, and she can trace simple line drawings.

Cutting-out and writing needn’t be the main focus areas for this age group. Rather concentrate on activities your child enjoys, but which also require the finger and hand muscles that will later be used for cutting and writing.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

■ Provide loads of opportunities for drawing.

■ Practise colouring-in, and don’t stress about going over the lines for now.

■ Provide simple drawings of shapes to trace. First your toddler will be able to trace a circle, then a cross, then an X, followed by other common forms – triangles, squares and rectangles.

■ Allow her to pick up objects with braai tongs or pliers.

■ Together, make a collage where she has to tear, cut and paste.

■ Encourage your toddler to build three-dimensional constructions out of her building blocks, such as bridges.

■ For playdough time, sometimes use tools such as rollers or cutters, and sometimes not.

■ When practising cutting, snip paper of different thicknesses and textures, as well as playdough, string and plastic drinking straws.

■ Can you resist popping bubble wrap? Neither will your son or daughter, once you show them how! Ensure your child is sitting properly when at her fine-motor work. Her feet should be square on the ground. (Place an old phone book or similar on the ground in front of her if the chair is too high.) Her hips, knees and ankles should all be at 90 degrees to each other, and her upper body should lean slightly forwards. The work surface should be at a height of 5cm above her elbows (measure with her arms hanging at her sides).