The American Occupational Therapy Association, Inc. (AOTA) has published several tip sheets for “living life to its fullest”. One article, Building Play Skills for Healthy Children & Families, discusses what is play, why it is important and how to develop these skills. Play is important at all stages of life, but many times it is referred to recreational activities for adults. This article describes how to develop these skills to promote healthy living during early childhood (infants, toddlers and preschoolers), elementary age, middle school, high school and beyond.
Archive for the ‘Blogs’ Category
Fine motor skills are very important for children to develop. These skills require the use of the small muscles in your hands. Fine motor activities include holding a pencil, coloring, cutting, stringing beads, playing games, buttoning, zipping, etc. This article, Help Your Preschool Child Develop Fine Motor Skills, explains what fine motor skills are, why some children have problems with fine motor skills, important hand skills children need to develop, and activities for developing hand skills.
Attached is an article that can be used as a guide of how to increase independence with self-care skills. It highlights what children should be able to do at certain ages. The article describes how to teach your child how to complete daily routines independently. It gives suggestions of why children can become difficult to manage when learning to become more independent with self-help tasks, and what we can do when they refuse to complete a task. Click on Teaching Your Child to Become Independent with Daily Routines for direct access to the PDF file or go to the link where other good resources can also be found https://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/resources/family.html .
There are many ways to practice writing letters of the alphabet without using paper and pencil. This article lists several fun ways to help a child to learn how to write the alphabet. Check out this article for many multi-sensory approaches to writing! Fun Ways to Teach Children How to Write the Letters of the Alphabet I have also added a couple other articles under the Handwriting tab.
Please see the new resource on the Fine Motor tab regarding milestones.
Check back for updates on fine motor development, sensory strategies, coordination skills and more!
