Question

Explain the meaning of fine motor skills. How these skills can be developed in children? Answer in 500 words.

Answer 1

Fine motor skills are achieved when children learn to use their smaller muscles, like muscles in the hands, fingers, and wrists. Children use their fine motor skills when writing, holding small items, buttoning clothing, turning pages, eating, cutting with scissors, and using computer keyboards. Mastery of fine motor skills requires precision and coordination.

Fine motor skills require precision.

Fine motor skills develop after gross motor noskills, which control actions like throwing and kicking balls, as well as walking and jumping. Gross motor skills utilize larger muscle groups and require less precision.



Practice, practice, practice. In most cases of fine motor skill development, practice does, in fact, make perfect. Some ways to develop these skills are having children do the following activities:

Pop bubbles on bubble wrap with just the index finger and thumb

Use an eyedropper to add food coloring to batter with just the index finger and thumb

Finger painting

Puzzles

Video games

Trace shapes or letters

Legos or building blocks

These activities focus on smaller muscle groups. Using the same muscles can help children develop muscle memory, which is when repetition of one action allows that action to be performed almost automatically without much effort. For example, pressing the correct buttons on video game controllers can be difficult the first few tries. But after playing the game a few times, we tend to master the buttons on the controller. Whether or not we can master the video game itself is a different story, but it does become second nature to press certain buttons to run or jump in the game.