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OTs can target fine motor skills in teletherapy in a variety of ways. Share your tips and tricks below!
I love to incorporate the current season/holiday into my sessions. Working on scissor skills can be so fun when you get to display your finished creation along with the rest of your family’s Halloween decorations!
My younger students have enjoyed working on fine motor tasks, strengthening and coordination with music and singing. For example, singing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” while walking fingers up a pencil can make an exercise seem much more fun! In addition, many learning coaches are happy to provide manipulatives that are readily available in most homes or schools. Examples include working on translation of an object with a coin or paper clip; ‘writing’ on the desk holding a cotton swab; or even tearing small pieces of paper and using them to play tabletop football.
I like to do gross motor warm ups at the start of session that target the shoulder girdle and then move down to smaller muscle movements to get their hands ready for fine motor tasks. I too, like to use the season/holidays to work on crafts/worksheets/themes to help them be aware of the season and upcoming holiday because there are so many fun activities targeted at using scissor skills, gluing, holding a glue stick, writing about the craft that make OT sessions more fun! I also like to have the schools (if they can) get a tennis ball and cut a slit in it and make a face on the ball so that the student can “feed” the ball buttons or beads to practice pincer grasp. I have yet to meet a kid who doesn’t like that one!
Shauna,
I like the writing with the cotton ball idea. I haven’t ever done that with a cotton ball. I’ll have to incorporate that!
A favorite fine motor activity for my students is rubber bands. It is as simple as taking various sized rubber bands (who doesn’t have those around the house?) and using both hands to open and stretch the rubber band to place over a small cup or a play doh container. It can easily be graded easier or harder by using one or two hands, use smaller/tighter or larger/loose bands, or progress to hair bands. Then pincher grasp can be addressed by removing the bands one at a time, switching hands to strengthen both sides. “Racing the therapist” is a popular way to engage the activity through the virtual environment. Viola! Look at all the areas we have addressed: fine motor coordination and strengthening, motor planning, mid-line tasking, bilateral integration, counting if you plan the number of bands, attention to task as well as interactive play/work.
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