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MOTOR SKILLS

Motor skills enable your child to participate in the everyday activities they need, want, and have to do. This could be learning activities such as reading, writing and using scissors. It could be play activities such as throwing a ball, balancing, jumping or building with blocks. And it could be self-care activities such as washing, dressing and toileting. 

If your child has difficulties with motor skills you can seek advice from an occupational therapist. Below are some ideas to work on both gross and fine motor skills in a fun way.

Fizzy Kids Programme

Fizzy Kids was developed by occupational therapists in the NHS and is free. It may be a useful website for you and/or your child's school to help develop your child's gross and fine motor skills.

Fizzy Kids focuses on 4 specific areas:

• Balance
• Ball skills
• Body awareness and coordination
• Clever Hands (fine motor skills)

The resource sheets are split into 3 different levels depending on your child’s ability: beginners, intermediate and advanced. Click here to access the website

Fun gross motor activities

The OT Toolbox is a great website for free motor skills activity ideas. Here are some ones you might like to try:

• Balance activities - this is aimed at younger children and gives lots of ideas including simple ones such as challenging balance by placing a pillow/cushion on the floor and having your child stand on it as part of an obstacle course. Another balance activity for children/young people is fun yoga poses and animal moves. Examples from the OT Toolbox are unicorn yoga and penguin yoga. These activities also support the development of motor planning.
• Hand eye coordination - this page explains all about hand-eye coordination development and there are also activity ideas such as scooping and pouring games - see the activity details here. 
• Body awareness - the proprioceptive system helps us know where our body is in space and it also helps us to use the appropriate force for a task. The OT Toolbox has a range of fun activity ideas to help your child develop their body awareness skills. For example Dinosaur Proprioception Activities or click here for more body awareness activities

Ms. Rachel offers a variety of fun, interactive learning videos that may be useful for your child Click here for Ms Rachel's YouTube channel.

This video may also be helpful - Fun motor skills activities

Fun fine motor activities

Griffin OT offers fun and interactive movement videos developed by an occupational therapist to support your child to develop their skills. Griffin OT also have online fine motor skills and handwriting training programme aimed at parents and professionals to support children who may face some difficulties with these skills. You can sign up for a free trial to see if these programmes may be suitable for you before officially signing up to it.  Click here for more information. 

Here are some other resources that may be helpful:

• The pincer grip is the ability to pick up small objects using the thumb and index finger in a coordinated manner. For example, picking up a cheerio or a small bead. This also looks like threading a needle or turning the page of a book. here is an example of an activity to work on the pincer grip from the OT Toolbox - Pincer Grip Activity. There are also common household games that help with the pincer grip including Connect 4, Dominoes, Jenga and Pick-up-Sticks. 

• Therapy putty is a strong, non-toxic, latex free putty-like material  designed as a fun activity to use to strengthen your child's hands and fingers or alternatively used as a fidget toy. There is also a video guide on how to make your own playdough if you don’t want to use theraputty, which may be a fun activity to do with your child - How to Make Playdough at Home.

• Spread The Happiness TV is a fun YouTube channel supporting children to develop motor skills using playdough and music. Another channel to check out is Early Years Emily.