Fine Motor Skills & Gross Motor Skills

A topic brought up at Danes therapy was how his fine and gross motor skills are.  We have noticed a decline in his fine motor skills.  He is having trouble zipping up his coat and putting on his shoes.  When he writes he doesn't hold the crayon correctly and struggles to write his name and draw shapes.  He did okay cutting with a scissors in a strait line.  Towards the end he just ripped the rest of the way off.

As far as his gross motor skills, he is doing very well.  He can run strait and climb.  The therapist asked if he was ever clumsy or had trouble with balance.  I told her that Dane recently has been able to ride his bike without training wheels.  He has very good balance and he is fast.  Too fast and he's hard to catch and keep up with.

Dane is a very good problem solver.  He loves it outside and always tries to get out of the house.  I tell him to wait and he gets upset and storms off outside when told "Not yet."  I don't like it that he gets up early in the morning and right away want's outside.  I say that we can go out at 11:00 and it's only 7:00.

Dane is capable of telling time by the numbers and understands the little hand on clocks.  He pushed a chair up to the battery operated clock on the wall, took it down and turned the small hand to 11.  Funny and smart thinking but that's not how it works I told him.  Turing the clock ahead 4 hours doesn't make it 4 hours later. Whether he understands that or not that was very interesting (and funny) that he did that.

The therapist recommended getting Dane some small legos to build with to work on his fine motor skills.  Usually in school they let the kids put beads on strings to make bracelets and necklaces for that type of skill.  Stacking blocks is also a good tool for learning hand-eye coordination.

At the end of the day the therapist suggested that we set the timer for about 5-7 minutes and make it a game to pick up the house.  During that time the kids and the parents do as much as they can in that time until the timer goes off.  Afterwords is supposed to be a celebration that they were good helpers and to treat them with some type of reward.  We're supposed to give them high 5's  and really soak it up on how helpful they are.  That's actually a good point because the kids are old enough now where they need to help out more.  It's always "You do it."  I'm tired of the kids making me pick up their mess.  It's time for the foot to come down and make them clean up after themselves.