Using food crafts to help develop precision in fine motor skills The skills needed to coordinate small muscles of the body, such as the muscles of the fingers, eyes, and ears take the longest time to mature. Synchronization of these smallest muscles requires sustained attention, along with the ability to remember little details about the actions of these muscles. The ability to pull together
(Try dressing, eating, or washing up without them) Most of the children I have treated over the years who have had coordination deficits generally tended to have difficulty using hand and finger motions as well. These difficulties often caused problems with daily living activities such as dressing, manipulating clothing fasteners (buttons, zippers, shoe laces, etc.), using utensils, grooming and hygiene. Planning developmentally appropriate projects
Researchers are now telling us what we already intuitively knew. Namely, that children who have difficulties with spatial concepts are far more likely to have challenges in math than their peers. Building geometric shapes with grapes and toothpicks has been a favorite way to have children grasp concepts of trajectories, alignment, bottom-up models of construction, and many other visual-spatial concepts. It’s also fun!