Category Archives: Gross Motor and Fine Motor

Fine motor Elephant Worksheets – Cutting with scissors:

Gross Motor and Fine Motor, Online Curriculum Week 6
Worksheet – Elephant Puddles PDF
Worksheet – Elephant Tracks PDF

We have been working with our illustrator on some wonderful cutting activities for this week. Have fun cutting along the straight puddles and squiggly paths made by the elephant!

Cutting Benefits include: Focus and concentration, strengthening of hand muscles, hand eye co-ordination, bilateral co-ordination from holding scissors in one hand and paper in the other.

Cutting skills take time and practice to develop. Children should start showing some competence around 3-4 years, but these skills are generally only fully developed around 6 years of age.

For the younger children, tearing paper and cutting dough using blunts scissors is a wonderful way to start working on these skills.

Each child is different and will develop at their own pace, but here are some guidelines of what to expect depending on their age:

18 months: Ripping and play dough play. Children exercise their tripod grasp as they grip the paper to rip it. Ripping also requires children to move their hands in opposite directions at the same time which helps develop bilateral co-ordination skills.

2 years old: Once your child has learnt to hold scissors, open and close the blades using both hands and has spent time cutting dough and tearing paper with hands, they can start to master opening and closing the scissors with one hand and move on to making small snips on the paper.

3 years old: Remember to always encourage a “thumbs up” position while holding the scissors. Help them learn to hold scissors with one hand and make snips on the paper while moving the scissors forward across a page. Make this easier by keeping the size of the page they are cutting small. Cutting will not be accurate or be a continuous forward motion.

4 years old: Your child will learn to cut more accurately (near to the line). Work on cutting along a straight line at first, and then a curved line and then different simple shapes (circle, square).

5 years old: Your child will learn to cut out more complex shapes with greater accuracy.

Gross Motor, Fine Motor and Life Skills with Teacher Julia:

EQ and life skills resources, Gross Motor and Fine Motor, Online Curriculum Week 4

Enlisting our children’s help around the house when it comes to cleaning up after themselves and other chores, is not only a wonderful life skill, but has many gross motor and fine motor benefits too!

This week Physiotherapist Julia Lee-Sylvester is sharing some wonderful “activities of daily life” for your @home gross motor and fine motor programme.

“As a neurodevelopmental therapist, one of my goals when working with children is to promote functional independence. Some might call these chores or life skills.

It’s good to be mindful that when we do include our kids in an activity, the process is more important than the result and there will likely be lots of mess 😉

Parents, for some their child helping them with chores or activities of daily life can be triggering and result in anxiety for you or your child. We can’t and do not need to include or stimulate them all at time!

When I find myself getting frustrated I stop and ask myself (after a few deep breaths); what would I like to be the memory we make here? Perfectly baked and iced cupcakes but an incredibly stressed out mom or an average batch of cupcakes that look like a dogs breakfast but a fun time had by all? Take the pressure off, especially during these difficult times we find ourselves in currently.” – Julia

Download PDF version here

Gross Motor Work with Teacher Julia:

COVID-19 specific support and materials, Gross Motor and Fine Motor

“As a paediatric physiotherapist I absolutely LOVE obstacle courses!

They provide an exciting opportunity to cater to your child’s sensory and motor needs while having fun. In addition to the sensory and physical benefits from doing the obstacle course your child may get a chance to practice valuable skills such as following simple to complex instructions, sequencing, short term memory, motor planning and imaginative play.

I hope you have fun thinking and planning WITH your little ones to see what you can add to your #lockdownobstaclecourse. Please feel free to tag @wateringwhole and @juliaphysio if you upload your videos on Facebook 🙂

Tips for setting up:
Try to include a variety of age appropriate activities that include some or all of the following:

  • weight bearing on arms through to the shoulder girdle
  • jumping or crashing/bashing
  • something that will get their heart rate up for some cardiovascular work
  • ball skills
  • balance
  • bilateral coordination, which is using the two sides of your body together in a controlled way (skipping, galloping, riding a bike).
  • be aware of your child’s unique sensory profile. Do they need deep pressure? Pulling, pushing something heavy? Do they need vestibular (movement) input? running, spinning, jumping, rolling? Are they nervous of fast movement and /or heights? Then lets rather ease into it slowly and start with something they are comfortable with.
  • be aware of your child’s play style and incorporate it to motivate them. Do they enjoy deeply imaginative play? Let’s save your friends from the lava monster! Or do they rather enjoy competing with themselves and want to make it a time trial..
  • something I often include in our obstacle courses at the Watering Whole is a fine motor component. Keep an eye out for next week’s post where I will explore some @home-friendly fine motor games to include in your obstacle course or to just do when you need a quiet activity to keep your littles ones stimulated.”