PARENTING TIPS 3: Here's how your child can develop fine motor skills at home

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In our previous blog, we had discussed about the importance of developing Motor Skills in children. In this blog we will draw your attention towards fine motor skills. These skills are achieved when children learn to use their smaller muscles. These skills require precision and coordination.
 
Honing the fine motor skills of your child at home can be one of the most beneficial things a parent can do to improve their child’s muscular movements. Young children need to be able to hold things such as crayons, pencils, etc. appropriately. This is why you as parents need to help your child strengthen their finer muscles which will in turn improve hand-eye coordination.

Here’s a practical guide from us on developing your child’s fine motor skills at home:

Basic hand and finger exercises:

Like we mentioned before, young children need to be able to get a better hold of their pencils and crayons (pincher grip) while writing or colouring.
Playdough: Get your child some playdough. As they roll, squeeze, squash, twist and build with it , your child’s fingers and hands become stronger.
Threading beads: Threading with beads is a brilliant way to build your child’s grasp as they use their thumb and forefinger which naturally strengthens their hand muscles along with hand-eye coordination.
Sorting: Mix up the pulses in a plate and guide your child to pick up and sort the favourite one using the pincher grip.

Wrist exercises:

Wrist exercises aim at improving wrist extension and wrist stability. It is essential to improve on them because they also prove beneficial later to master handwriting.
Working on a vertical surface: Working on a vertical surface implies that while your child is drawing, writing or colouring, just encourage them to do so on a vertical surface. Such an activity maximizes wrist extension.
Dart Boards: Dart Boards can be fun and tossing the darts stimulates the wrist extension. The use of magnetic darts can make this exercise both, fun and safe.
 
Shoulder exercises:

Whenever children wish to move their hands or fingers, their shoulders must either stabilize and for this, the development of shoulder muscles is indispensable. Shoulder exercises aim for coordination, postural control and so on.
Crawl, push, lift: There are a lot of fun activities that include your child to crawl, push or lift. You can teach your child the leopard crawl by first demonstrating it yourself first. This can be later followed by push-ups.
Jumping rope: Skipping ropes provide for excellent isometric contraction i.e. stability of the muscles of the shoulders. It requires rhythmically working together of wrists, shoulders, hands, feet and fingers thus, working on improving the fine motor skills.

Muscle strengthening exercises:

There is a diverse range of muscle strengthening exercises which are also fun. For example, painting with a sponge, cutting with scissors, lacing, weaving, tracing, and so on. These activities work on developing different muscles of the body as they are to be used to perform everyday tasks. The stronger the muscles, the more tasks can a child do. It is through this muscle control that the child is able to control his/her muscle movements.

Fine motor skills are essential to be improved and cannot be compromised upon. Therefore, development of these skills is of maximum importance for an excellent academic future.