Fine Motor Skills in Kindergarten

Our third children began Kindergarten in the middle of the Pandemic when our local schools are closed and children are learning remotely. Just watching him using a pencil and scissors has been so much fun and he is so truly lucky that we are able to teach him to use these materials. But what does your child really need to know and what tricks are there for parents when it comes to pencil grip and using scissors?

What Should We Focus On

First, building a proper pencil grip and scissor usage takes time and practice. Do not expect this to be fixed over night or with one explanation. The more your child cuts, colors, writes, and draws, the quicker they will establish the proper grip and muscles needed to write and cut. So much of developing a good grip starts with strengthening their hand and finger muscles.

Strengthen Hand and Finger Muscles

There are so many different ways to help strengthen your child’s hands and finger muscles. But really, the more your child uses the fingers to work with little objects, the better. Current research shows that as your child’s finger muscles strengthen, their ability to write legibly improves.

Activities to Strengthen Finger Muscles

1. Playdoh and clay – let them model the playdoh and clay to make shapes, animals, figures. The more firm the playdoh and clay are, the more strength it takes to shape the dough. If you make your own playdoh, try adding a little less water to make the playdoh more firm.
2. Little legos – let your child build with legos, it takes hand and finger strength to snap them together, pull them apart, and even to pick up some of those tiny legos. In addition, you can work on adding in reading directions too if you happen to have a kit.
3. Beads and Noodle Jewelry- let your little one string beads or colored noodles onto yarn or string to make bracelets and necklaces or even door hangers or decorations. The smaller the beads, the more coordination this will take on the part of your child and the more they will work their finger muscles. Don’t have colored noodles, no worries, just add noodles to a bag with a little liquid food coloring and shake.
4. Make cookies together – not only does your child work on strength with measure and pouring, but they also can roll the dough using a rolling pin, push with cookie cutters, and use their hands to pinch and roll dough into cookies to bake.
5. Tearing and Cutting Paper – give your child old magazines and newspapers to tear and cut. Just tearing the paper helps to strengthen their muscles, especially as the paper gets smaller and smaller. And of course, using scissors will help too! It takes a lot of hand and finger strength to use scissors properly and easily.

Developing Proper Pencil Grip

As your child ages and they strengthen their finger muscles, their pencil grip will change too. Most children develop a tripod grasp during kindergarten. However, some children do need a bit longer and their grasp might develop even into first grade. You can see the progression below.

Progression

Importance of Functional Pencil Grip

There are a variety of reasons that we want to help children develop functional pencil grips. Collen Schneck, an Occupational Therapist, asserts that pencil grip allows for the necessary fine motor movements needed for writing. Developing a functional pencil grip is thought to help children write longer without tiring, provide more control for writing to improve legibility, and increase speed. In addition, mature pencil grips are rarely painful for a child.

However, more current research is expanding the number of functional pencil grips and there seems to be a lack of research pointing to immature pencil grips being the main cause of illegibility and difficulty writing. Therefore, if your child has a non-efficient pencil grip, but doesn’t struggle with writing or handwriting in any way, you do not need to correct their pencil grip. With the years of practice that your child has using this grip, this is their strongest grip and trying to change the grip may cause more difficulty. On the other hand, if the pencil grip is causing your child pain or difficulty writing, then you should definitely look into changing your child’s pencil grip.

And if your child is still developing their pencil grip? Why not help them develop what the world considers a more efficient pencil grip because most people use it. So, what does a functional pencil grip look like? Well, there are more than one functional grip, so don’t worry if your child’s looks a little different.

Functional Pencil Grips

Below are a few pictures of good pencil grips to help your child develop. While I’ve included 3 pictures of functional pencil grips, these are not the only efficient pencil grips.

_{*I’ve gathered these pictures through years of teaching and have lost track of the source, so if you created these, please reach out and let me know so I can give credit where credit is do!}

So, how do you work with your child to develop these grips? Many children naturally develop a good pencil grip because it feels the most comfortable in their hand. Moreover, they observe the pencil grip of their parents and teachers, who mostly use a tripod grip. However, for the child struggling with writing and holding a pencil, there are a few tricks of the trade we will explore now.

Developing an Efficient Pencil Grip

1. Lay your pencil on the table with the tip pointing towards you. Pinch the pencil near the tip and pick it up and flip it into the correct grip. Magic!
2. Teach your child to use an alligator pinch when holding their pencil. The alligator is the thumb and pointer finger. Practice pinching thumb and pointer together as the alligator before moving to a pencil. And if your child needs more support, it’s okay to add a third finger to hold the pencil steady.
3. If your child likes to add lots of fingers onto their pencil, introduce a Kleenex or cotton ball to hold as they hold their pencil. Have your child place the Kleenex or cotton ball in their palm held in by their middle, ring, and pinky fingers. This leaves only their pointer and thumb to actually hold the pencil while the pencil rests on their middle finger.
4. Give your child smaller crayons or pencils to hold. Having a smaller writing tool encourages their grip to move towards the tip of the pencil as well as limits how many other fingers can actually be on the writing utensil. Plus it’s a great way to use all those broken and overly used crayons.
5. Buy triangular crayons or pencils where there is a place for each finger that should hold the pencil. These triangular writing utensils help your child to feel their grip and place their fingers easily to hold the writing utensil.

What about Scissors?

There are a few tricks for teaching your child to hold and use scissors correctly. Getting a proper grip tends to be easier than with a pencil, however, good technique takes time and practice. Teaching them to cut on the line, holding scissors away from their body, and turning the paper needs many different opportunities to use scissors.

Newspapers and magazines are great for scissor practice because we almost always have a few laying around, children can usually find pictures or boxes to practice cutting on lines, and the paper usually can be draw on to cut out different designs too. You can allow your child to cut up junk mail or paper you are planning to recycle.

Scissor Cutting Tips

1. Your thumb goes in the smaller hole of your scissors. The larger hole can have 1 – 3 fingers inside depending on your child’s finger strength. The weaker your child’s finger and hand strength, the more fingers they may need to use to cut.
2. Your thumb always goes UP when you cut.
3. You should always cut with scissors pointed away from your body.
4. Turn the paper not your hand. Move the paper not the scissors as you cut.
5. Cut on the line not next to the line or inside the line.
6. Keep scissors below your shoulders and away from your face.

Scissor Cutting Materials

As you first begin practicing with scissors, the textures and weights of the materials are important. Children generally go better with thicker materials in the beginning because their guide hand needs to do less work. Begin by practicing with cutting straws, construction paper, or index cards to add some weight to initial cutting experiences. Cutting playdoh can be especially fun too! Then move on towards lightweight paper. Lightweight paper tends to be more flimsy for your child’s hand.

Also be mindful of too thick materials in the beginning. Even as an adult, cutting through cardboard can be tricky. Real thick materials can tire your hand and be difficult to cut through. Another type of material to show caution are materials that are easy to rip. Be careful with some magazines, specific wrapping paper, and parchment paper. These papers rip super easy as you cut with scissors.

Right Handed vs Left Handed

While the above cutting tips work for both right handed and left handed children, there are some differences. When cutting, you don’t want your hand to get in the way of seeing the line. If a child is right handed, they should cut counterclockwise so they can see the line they are cutting on. Children who are left handed will need to cut in a clockwise direction.

You should also consider left handed scissors. Why? Because they reverse the blades so that children can get a clean cut and better see the line to cut on. Children will not need to press so hard to cut and will get a better cut.

Not Ready to Give your Child Scissors, But Want to Build the Skills?

That’s okay. You can build scissor skills and fine strength without actually using scissors. However, once your child is ready for scissors, be sure they get plenty of practice with using scissors for cutting. This is especially important to help your child learn to handle the paper and lessen their hand tiredness when cutting.

Many every day tasks help to build the hand strength needed for using scissors. Eating with a fork and spoon, zipping your pants, buttoning, and even brushing their hair or teeth. These every day tasks using fingers and hands help to prepare your child for using scissors and make those first scissor experiences more enjoyable.

All of the activities to strengthen finger muscles above actually help with scissors too! The more your child uses their fingers and hands, the strong these muscles will become. Additionally, you can encourage your child to help you with a variety of clips that require a pincher grasps. For examples, your child could use clothespins to hang up clothes, put papers in the magnetic clips on the fridge, put clips in their hair, or even help clip bags closed.

Spray bottles are great too! Let your child water the plants or spray water on your tables for cleaning. If you use child friendly cleaning supplies, you can even let your child spray the cleaner on the tables. For a little older children, you can ask your child to spray bug spray or sunscreen on their legs.

Final Tips on Pencil Grip and Scissor Skills

It is not a sprint but a marathon when working on both scissor skills and pencil grip. Usually we have the benefits of a certified teacher to help our children develop these skills, but with remote learning, parents need to learn how to help their child more than ever. So, provide time for practice each day or at least most days. Keep these practice sessions short so your child doesn’t tire. This short daily practice does a lot more than a once a week longer practice. Additionally, you can build up the length of practice time as your child becomes more efficient.

To further support your young learner, be sure to check out my Learning to Read Series, starting with Teaching Letters and Sounds. This is an early post in this series, which will walk you through the most important areas of reading. Struggling with pencil grip or scissors? Have another great tip? We’d love if you would leave us a comment below and let us know. Looking for more content from us, please subscribe to our newsletter below for practical parenting solutions with freebies thrown in throughout the journey.

Hi, I’m Nicole.

Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.