Aussie Ideas

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Home : 2007 : August : 30

Aussie Ideas
By autumnblossom

I had a few children at the start of our school year (February) that had poor fine motor skills in grade 1. I used lots of things to try to improve this.
1. Letters cut from magazines put into a container (I used pill
boxes) then use tweezers to get the letters out and put them into a matrix a-z. The children could also make words with their letters.
2. Confetti or the holes punched from a hole punch used to paste onto big letters or words. Use tweezers to put confetti onto the letters.
3. peg puzzles
4. Use pegs and write a letter of the alphabet on each peg at the pincher part. Then

use popsicle sticks and write on the end of them different spelling patterns. eg. sh, th, ee, ea, ll, etc. The children then use the pegs to make words with the pop sticks. Confused!
5. Tearing activities - Have children tear coloured paper and make a picture with the torn pieces. Like a collage. Have them tear the paper with pinched fingers.
6. Use pipe cleaners and bend them to make letters then make words and paste the pipecleaners onto card.
7. Sorting buttons or beads.
8. I bought lots of letter stickers off ebay and the children used these to spell out their spelling words or words they made with magnetic letters. The motion to get the stickers off the sticker page is the pincher move!
9. Making words with magnetic letters
10. Rolling playdough in their hands to make a long snake and then make letters with them and spell their name or other words
11. Colouring in pictures. We use ones that have a pattern on them like a mosaic, very small spaces hard to stay in the lines. Takes lots of control.

I am not sure what sort of lines you use for handwriting. We use something called dotted thirds. If you know what that is let me know and I will put you onto a good website for handwriting.

I hope these helped. They did for me. Plus patience!!!!