{"id":345491,"date":"2022-10-19T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-19T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/10-occupational-therapy-exercises-for-fine-motor-skills\/"},"modified":"2022-10-19T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-10-19T09:00:00","slug":"10-occupational-therapy-exercises-for-fine-motor-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/10-occupational-therapy-exercises-for-fine-motor-skills\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Occupational-Therapy Exercises for Fine Motor Skills"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With children who have DYS disorders, a handwriting therapist can set up a <strong>small daily ritual<\/strong> to work on their fine motor skills: exercises that begin, even before the pencil touches the paper, with a little finger gym and correct pencil grip. Here are a few easy activities to set up, to support your child in their handwriting re-education\u2026<\/p>\n<h2>5 exercises for a finger gym<\/h2>\n<p>Even before starting a writing session, the handwriting therapist will emphasise the importance of posture. Once the child is properly seated, they will <strong>do a bit of gym<\/strong> to loosen and strengthen the fingers:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Exercise 1 &#8220;The lying-down 8&#8221;: <\/strong>recommended in Brain Gym, it optimises communication between the two hemispheres of the brain. Draw the shape of a lying-down 8 vertically, horizontally, or in the air, first with the right hand, then the left hand, before repeating the movement with eyes closed.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Exercise 2 &#8220;The flat piano&#8221;:<\/strong> with the hand flat on the table, lift each finger several times, one after another.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Exercise 3 &#8220;Walking&#8221;:<\/strong> place the index and middle fingers on the table and make them walk.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Exercise 4 &#8220;Thumb piano&#8221;:<\/strong> hand spread out, touch the index finger to the thumb, then the middle finger to the thumb, then the ring finger and thumb, and finally the little finger and thumb.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Exercise 5 &#8220;The fist&#8221;:<\/strong> hand closed, quickly spread all fingers out straight then close them again, before starting over.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>5 handwriting-therapy exercises for pencil grip<\/h2>\n<p>The <strong>grasp reflex<\/strong> appears in utero and naturally integrates around 10 months of age. When this doesn&#8217;t happen, it causes tension and affects the child&#8217;s skills in handwriting, grasping, and manipulation: this results in awkward pencil grips, which can be painful. To work on fine motor skills, <strong>several exercises<\/strong> are available:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Exercise 6 &#8220;Paper ball&#8221;:<\/strong> crumple and uncrumple a sheet of paper with one hand.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Exercise 7 &#8220;Knucklebones&#8221;:<\/strong> play the knucklebones game, which works on finger dexterity and motor skills.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Exercise 8 &#8220;1, 2, 3, sun&#8221;:<\/strong> draw a snowflake on the pad of the thumb and another on the side of the middle-finger nail, then draw a sun in the fingers. With the hand closed, say &#8220;1&#8221; with the thumb, &#8220;2&#8221; with the index finger, and &#8220;3&#8221; with the middle finger, then &#8220;sun&#8221; by bringing the two snowflakes together and creating a nice round sun. The shape created mirrors the correct pencil grip.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Exercise 9 &#8220;Textures&#8221;:<\/strong> handle different textures with the whole hand, such as modelling clay, salt dough, earth, clay, marbles, sand\u2026<\/li>\n<li><strong>Exercise 10 &#8220;Scoubidou strings&#8221;<\/strong>: tie and untie knots, or make a scoubidou braid, to work on finger dexterity in a concrete way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Don&#8217;t hesitate to <strong>ask a <a href=\"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/handwriting-therapy-remote\/\">handwriting therapist on the Ora Visio platform<\/a><\/strong> for advice: our professionals will know which exercises to put in place, based on your child&#8217;s difficulties and age.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With children who have DYS disorders, a handwriting therapist can  [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":345492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[331],"tags":[368],"class_list":["post-345491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-handwriting-therapy","tag-handwriting-therapist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ora-visio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}