Improving Fine motor movements of fingers

With Abhi, the main problem is with his fine motor movements using his fingers. I could make out the difference with his right hand fingers. He wont be able to do a smooth movement of his fingers. I could see the stiffness of the muscles when he tries to do drawing curves/circles etc. What ever comes quite naturally for any child, it seems not at all possible for Abhi. I have to sit with him and make him practice doing the activity.

As I have always found that to make the children sit for sometime, especially with a dull activity which you mention as exercise or therapy, is very difficult. Our therapist also know that. So we device art techiniques which include many activities. So depending on the child’s interest we have to change the approach to make them do the activity.
One very good activity to improve muscle strength of fingers is to make dough from the wheat flour etc as for chapathi/roti.
An alternate and interesting variety will be to prepare paper maché. This involves more than one activity for fingers.

• Tearing of paper with tip of fingers
• Mixing glue and water (wrist movement)
• Mixing the paper/tissue pieces with glue-water and making dough
• To make the activity more interesting make shapes out of this dough and colour them.

To get an idea see the below link.

http://homecraftideas.blogspot.com/2008/08/paper-mach-art-secret-pen-holder.html

One more thing which I realised is, if I make Abhi do OT as exercise or OT activity, I also get disappointed or frustrated thinking,"God, how long I have to continue this to see the improvement in him". Like the doctor has said once, it wont happen in a day as miracle. So I also stopped to say about OT activities, instead tell only about what all way you can do ART.

Colours n shading n sticking

Abhi's OT therapist has asked him to do lot of shading activity using crayons and colour pencils. This improves his finger steadiness and coordination for writing drawing etc.

As usual, to make abhi sit and do an exercise or OT acitivity is difficult. But MAY BE doing an art is possible. And it worked, he was interested to make a photo album.

See the post to make a KIDS PHOTO ALBUM :

http://homecraftideas.blogspot.com/2008/06/kids-photo-album.html

Wet clothes and sponges.

Wet clothes and sponges give a good exercise and massaging to the fingers. Keep aside one or two new table wipes, big sponges or cotton clothes in different colours for the children to use. Make sure that the cloth or sponge is bigger than their palm.!

How to :

• Request them to help you in wiping the table, wash the car, wipe the mirrors etc.
• After each wipe ask them to dip the sponge in the water and squeeze the water out.
• For the car wash, add little soap and I am sure they will enjoy!
• Ask them to help you in washing their socks, handkerchiefs etc while you are washing their uniform.
• Tip them with small gifts, story books or coins for their piggy banks, once they are done with helping and squeezing the sponge.

Other ideas

• Give them water colours, sponge and charts. Show them how to dip and use sponge to make pictures on the chart, like leaves of trees, water, sea, sky etc
• Ask them to imagine and do pictures of their own. Do not tell rules that you have to paint like this, let them use their own imagination.

Note: Many times children's imagintion is very wild. It may not match ours, as we think more towards reality. They may paint the leaves red, flowers blue. But try not to restrict their imagination.

Making Paper rolls

Making paper rolls from used paper or news paper is a very good activity to improve the finer motor movements of the fingers.

Initially Abhi found it ver difficult to use his right hand thumb and index fingers to roll. So I used alter with right and left hands. Also I gave him pencils or straws to start the roll. Soon he picked up on the rolling. Slowly do rolls with papers of different thickness.

This activity can be made interesting for the kids, if it is done as a creative project or art. Visit the below link to check how to make a vase from the paper rolls.

http://homecraftideas.blogspot.com/2007/08/paper-roll-flower-vase.html