How much screen time should a typical 4-year-old have??
If you guessed 30 minutes or less, you’d be right! This was just one of the topics we covered during our Finger Funatics Parent Night last night. Over 40 preschool families came to learn about the importance of fine motor (such as visual motor integration) and gross motor (such as a cross crawl) development. Kids can’t develop any of these motor skills if they don’t have lots of experiences with real objects in the physical world!
What is fine motor development?
Fine motor movements involve the coordination of small muscles in the hands and fingers. Strong fine motor skills are essential to complete tasks such as writing, cutting, using a fork or spoon, threading beads, moving puzzle pieces, zipping, buttoning, and tying shoe laces. Without well-developed fine motor skills, a child may have difficulty learning to write or performing many of the other critical tasks presented in the preschool and kindergarten classrooms.
What is Finger Funatics?
Finger Funatics is an early intervention program that teaches children to strengthen their hands and improve their fine motor skills. Through playful games, using age appropriate materials, children spend minutes a day building skills. It includes a quick screener to assess deficiencies and 50+ fine motor activities you can do with things you already have.
Treasure Hunt
At our Finger Funatics Parent Night, each family received a Finger Funatics Parent Companion and Workshop Tool Kit. This toolkit includes the Parent Companion book with 50+ activity card, spiral bound for easy use, and a bag of simple items needed to play the games included in the book (such as tweezers, scissors, play-doh, clothes pin, etc.).
It was wonderful to watch whole families involved with developing their child’s fine motor skills! Activities like Treasure Hunt, Pom Pons Pick Up (and more!) are so much fun, and so beneficial for students.
Try some activities!
Treasure Hunt
Hide 10 beads in play-doh and try to remove the beads one-by-one with only one hand!
Funatic-Doh Snip
Make a thick worm and snip off pieces (the thicker the diameter the more challenging).
Pom-Pons Pick Up:
Using a clothes pin to pick up cotton balls or pom-pons one at a time. Try using different finger combinations.
Penny Grab:Pick up one penny at a time without sliding it to the end of the table. For a challenge try different finger combinations.
Interested in doing a Parent Night? This school was able to fund our Parent Night together through the PNC Bank grant they received. Check the website to see if they conduct philanthropy in your region!
