If you have a student who is currently working on fine motor skills,a fine motor fluency program is a good next step once they are independently reaching, grasping, squeezing, pressing, twisting, pulling, pushing, releasing etc.
Bringing a skill to fluency is an integral when considering making that skill functional. If your student can grasp and release in quick succession, this is likely to affect how quickly they learn how to zip up their jacket, or tie their shoes, pick up a pencil when it falls, or a type on a paragraph on a keyboard.
Here’s a basic fine motor fluency program for picking up coins and putting them in a piggy bank.
Things you’ll need:
Piggy bank with opening at the bottom, and pennies: Ensure you use a piggy bank with a small slit at the top that you can easily remove the coins from after each fluency timing. Pennies are small enough to allow the student to practice that pincer grip.
Timer: A key component to any fluency program is the use of timed sessions (often referred to as a ‘timing’). You usually want to keep timings short (e.g., 15 seconds) and keep the time constant. That way you can do multiple timings within the general instructional time and multiple fluency programs can be combined. How fun!
NB: Once the student is performing proficiently on a specific fluency program, you can conduct an extended timing to test for their endurance, just to see if they can do it for a longer. 😉
Data Sheet: This allows you to keep track of how many coins your student can get into the bank before the timer goes off. This will tell you whether or not they are improving (going faster over time).
Reinforcers: Provide brief access to a preferred item/toy or a sample of a preferred snack while you quickly count their number of coins in the bank.
Check out the Video Tutorial:
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- Using TAH Curriculum for Homeschooling from a Homeschooling Parent - September 10, 2022
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