Practice, practice, practice! Daily muscle work!
This may look different in every classroom and for each individual teacher depending of the grade level and student makeup. Motor Skill Development does not have to take up any additional classroom time. If you are intentional about implementing motor work into your schedule and regular daily routine your students will reap the benefits.
Simple ways to develop gross motor skills:
- Recess- Come on everyone loves recess right! The playground is the easiest place for students to work their gross motor skills through play: swinging, climbing, running, jumping, etc. The list goes on. You can be intentional about playing the right games or activities that will help your students develop in the areas necessary.
- Brain Breaks- In the classroom, you can intentionally implement gross motor work into your regular brain breaks. GoNoodle.com provides brain breaks that kids really enjoy including dancing, exercise, stretching, etc. However, you can do this without any tools at all. You can have students run in place as fast as they can, press their hands together while they focus, and sing songs with movement and memory motions. Anytime they are stomping, climbing, crunching, lifting, etc. they are using gross motor skills.
- Academic Areas – When you are intentional, you can implement gross motor movement into any part of your learning day. For example kindergarteners could form letters with their body, count by 10’s while doing jumping jax, stomp out your spelling or sight words, there are so many ways to do this. You simply need to be intentional. Upper elementary kids can jump or dance when they hear a particular vocabulary word. Drama and dance can also provide gross motor work for your students. Have them act out a story plot. I think you get my point. Get the kids using their muscles. Bust a move people!
- Crazy Maze Hallway – Many elementary schools are turning their hallways into a maze of sorts, that provides gross motor work, while serving as a break from the classroom. As they students move down the hall they follow zig zags, hop on dots, spin on circles, etc. This has been a trend more recently and creates a fun environment for developmental learning.
Fine Motor Skills practice should be part of the daily routine in elementary classrooms as well, especially PreK-2nd grade.
You can plan for fine motor workouts in your daily lessons using strategies that will simultaneously work those tiny muscles in the wrists, hands, and fingers as they learn their academic content. This is easy and also will make learning fun!
In upper elementary grades (3-5) the need for this daily practice will be less. However, we all know that from year to year our case load is different. There are years when there is more of a need for it than others. When teachers see a need, they provide those kids with the strategies and activities that are necessary for learning. The same holds true for fine motor development. If you have students with developmental delays you will know how true this really is. If you have a handful of kids with weak fine motor skills, will it hurt to assign the whole class spelling word practice using playdough or putty? Absolutely not! In fact, sometimes bringing out the little kid “toys” brings learning back to life for those upper elementary kids. Let’s face it, there is a kid in all of us who is dying for an opportunity to play!
Let’s talk about how we can do all of this without adding more to your plate. We can easily integrate motor skills into the parts of your day that are already established.
4 Ways to Implement Fine Motor into your day:
- DAILY Fine Motor Bins (a must do in prek-2) Daily Fine Motor Work is necessary in lower elementary grades. Basically you create a rotating schedule of short activities that will last for the month. Each day the students do a different bin. This is a concept that many of my teacher friends use in a variety of ways! It’s brilliant really and can be used at any time during the day. I recommend it to be used first thing in the morning. I believe that we all need a soft start to our day. This is also a way to work “smarter not harder”. You see, you simply find tubs, bins, drawers, whatever works for you and you fill them with activities! I used a rolling drawer unit that had 11 drawers. I would fill each drawer with a different type of fine motor activity. Each morning when the student walked through the door, they started their morning routine which ended with getting their fine motor bin. The students knew which bin they were getting and if they forgot there was a rotating chart posted in the room. I also recommend assigning them a partner (this also helped with keeping each other on track). I like Daily Fine Motor Activities for Morning Work for a couple reasons:
- Motivation – Students love to do them! It motivates them to get unpacked and started with their day quickly, if you use them as morning work. They also can be used as a reward! I’ve even had students ask if they can do them during indoor recess! Sure! Why not?
- Work Smarter, Not Harder! No more searching for busy work to use to occupy them while you take attendance and check foIders. If you fill at least 10 drawers this will last a month before you need to refill them. This way you don’t have to plan for it every week or every day when you are already implementing the Daily Fine Motor Work as their morning work. It’s also fun to use monthly themes.
- Moving the body (big or small muscles) wakes up the brain! These fine motor workouts will get their little muscles moving first thing in the morning while keeping you on track with DAILY fine motor practice. Using these muscles will wake up their brain so that it’s ready to learn for the day.
- Weekly Centers (All grades)- Most elementary classrooms do some sort of weekly (or daily) center rotation. Designate one of your weekly centers to fine motor development. This doesn’t mean you have to ditch what you already do, it simply means that you keep the centers you always plan, but choose one of them to have an activity that requires fine motor skills! The list is endless. This can be done in any subject area! Fine Motor is not the subject area, it’s the tool and action used to complete the activity in the subject area.
- Extra Activities-When students finish their work teachers typically have several options for students to work on so that they aren’t wandering around or interrupting those still working. A jar of playdough is the perfect quiet activity! Coloring pages are fun for all ages! In the upper elementary grades, one teacher had a knitting table or cross stitch projects. This is another way to keep the motor skills strengthened! I will share a list of tools that will help develop fine motor skills later in this chapter.
- Individualized Fine Motor Activities- There are going to be students in your class that have developmental delays and may need to work with the school Occupational Therapist! This is a great opportunity for you to learn from your student! Allow them to use what they learn from OT in your class daily! Celebrate their progress by allowing them to showcase the strategies they’ve used to accomplish their goals! You can also ask your school OT to suggest strategies and tools that will help you to create fine motor practice for your whole group based on the needs of these individuals. All of the students will benefit, the delayed student will feel confident because they already know how to do it, and you will be supporting your Occupational Therapists individualized goals for the child! This is really important and will pay off!
Ok, let’s recap!
Fine Motor Development is vital in order for long term success of academic standards.
We can integrate fine motor work into our already established schedule without taking away from another part of our day.
We can do this daily, weekly, whole group, small group, and we can individualize it!
If you are interested in a list of tools that make learning fun while developing motor skills click here to get some great ideas!
Also, I’d love to hear how you are doing this in your own classroom!!! Comment below to share some ideas!
Enjoy Being Their Difference,
