Day 8- Fri., July 13th, 2012.

Predominately teaching lower elementary I was very interested in the Fine Motor skills webinar.  I knew fine motor skills are precise coordinated movements using joints and muscles of the body to manipulate pencils, crayons etc., but what I did not realise before this webinar was how much of the total body is involved. Fine motor skills do not just involve using the muscles in your hand and arm; it involves shoulder muscles and having good trunk control. It was said it relies on all the body systems from the inside out. I was surprised to learn that pencil grip is established by age 10-11, I thought it was much earlier (I was thinking 7-8). This gives lower elementary teachers and parents more time than I thought to strengthen muscles, correct formation and work on pencil grip issues students may have.

The webinar highlighted some great apps to develop and support fine motor skills. Here are a few I can see using in my classroom:

Dexteria App $4.99- I like the fact that it was
designed by Occupational Therapists (OT), it provides many different types of exercises for the whole hand that develops fine motor skills and writing readiness.  The games develop tapping, pinching and writing skills. I really like the letter formation aspect that is like the popular Handwriting Without Tears program that I used in my classroom this year. I could see using this app in the classroom to support struggling writers as well as practise for beginning writers. A stylus can be used with this app to help develop proper pencil grip. It is very engaging and offers rewards for task completion.


Injini app $29.99 (FREE lite version available)- I LOVE that it is designed by teachers, too often teacher's experience and recommendations are not taken into consideration. It can be used to assess children in the early intervention program, provides engagement and sustains attention to task. It involves the use of the whole hand, not just one finger tapping the screen.You can use a stylus. Some of its great features are the countdown to prepare for the activity (3,2,1), a simple screen format, reinforce after completion, and it is self correcting.


Touch and Write app used to be a free, but now the charge is $2.99- it is a rewarding, self correcting, fun child centre app where players can choose what they want to "write" with ( examples are frosting, whipped cream, shaving cream, etc.)- which adds an additional appeal!

Writepad $9.99- use stylus or finger to convert writing to text. It is engaging to have print go to text immediately, it goes to speech, has word prediction, edit features, language options and you can email it.






 A very appealing app for young students would be the Cars2 Map app which is free- but the catch is you have to buy the car for it separate, which is approx.$25 through ebay. It is great for developing the tripod grasp (when holding the car), developing proper pressure technique from holding the car on the ipad, and it promotes directionality,use non dominate hand as well as wrist action. What I do not like is how much they charge for the car; if it wasn't associated with Cars the movie it would sell for a fraction of the cost.

Younger students would enjoy using all of these apps, but I can especially see my students who have difficulty attending and who require rewards for task completion to benefit from these.