1. FS1 ‘Developing Fine Motor Control’ Workshop
12th October 2015

2. Our Aim
We want to help parents to gain a clearer understanding of the importance of fine motor development in FS1. This workshop aims to explain the following points:
Why is it so important?
What do we do to help the children develop in school?
How do we assess the children’s needs?
How can parents help at home?

3. Why is fine motor control
so important in FS1?

4. Why is fine motor development so important?
Many children in FS1 come to school struggling to hold a pencil and cannot recognise (and write) their name.
As these children are not developmentally ready to write, they need specific help to strengthen the important core and hand muscles.
The hand is a complex piece of machinery and is made up of lots of joints and muscle groups that interconnect and work together to provide maximum dexterity.
We use daily physical intervention activities called Dough Gym & Funky Fingers, which involve a series of hand, arm, shoulder and finger exercises. These strengthen and develop children’s fine and gross motor dexterity, hand-eye co-ordination, proprioception, balance, low load control, grip and most importantly, their self-esteem!
We cannot change the demands of the curriculum, but we can help to make children better prepared for it...

5. Funky Fingers in Action!

6. This is fine-motor control!
Fine Motor Development
Children’s arms and hands contain a series of pivotal joints which develop from biggest to smallest (shoulder, elbow, wrist, fingers).
Once the pivots have worked their way down to the wrist, the journey doesn’t stop there; although for lots of children it becomes far trickier and they often face difficulties.
The end of the ‘pivot’ journey will be when we get that mark making to the very last, smallest set of pivots, right at the end of the fingers. If we can hold our mark making tool there, then we have the fullest, most dexterous range of movement that our bodies can provide.
This is fine-motor control!

7. The general starting point in FS1…

8. By the end of the Funky Fingers journey…

9. What do we do to help children develop their
Fine motor skills in school?

10. Dough Gym & Funky Fingers
We hope that children are ready to begin developing their fine- motor skills when they arrive in FS1, however, there are many children who are still at the gross-motor stage. This is where Dough Gym comes in.
Dough Gym works mainly on children’s shoulder, elbow and wrist joints and gross motor strength (a child cannot master fine motor activities until gross motor skills are developed).
Once the gross-motor skills are developed the children are then physically able to access the fine-motor activities – also known as ‘Funky Fingers’.
By offering this combined intervention each day, we can make sure we are catering for all children’s abilities so they can move forward in the right direction, following the correct process.

11. Dough Gym… …Is fast-paced, good fun and done in time to music.
It is led by an adult who calls out instructions which the children follow using their fingers, hands and/or dough.
It is used with a small group of children alongside Funky Fingers.
Dough Gym must be based on accurate assessment and linked to specific physical development.
Even though it is called ‘Dough Gym’, it is about much more than the dough.
Alongside the development of their muscles, children also need to develop their sense of proprioception and balance, which is why they always stand up at the Dough Gym table.

12. Dough Gym in Action!

13. Funky Fingers
In a child’s journey to becoming a mark maker and eventually a writer, they need to become proficient in certain skills. Our Funky Fingers activities help them to get there quicker so that they are less likely to fall behind in FS2 and later. The skills we work on are:
Pincer grasp or grip
Palm arches
In-hand manipulation
Thumb opposition
Finger isolation
Knuckle, PIP and DIP joints
Bilateral co-ordination
Hand/eye co-ordination

14. Hand/eye co-ordination Bilateral co-ordination
Funky Fingers
Bilateral co-ordination
Pincer grip

15. Funky Fingers
Palm strength
Knuckle, PIP and DIP joints

16. How does it work?
Generally, there is one Dough Gym group and the rest of the children work in small groups (of 4) rotating around the Funky Fingers activities.
The Funky Fingers activities stay for a week. They are only used at Funky Fingers time and not for the rest of the day. This helps us to monitor how the children are using them to make sure they have ultimate impact, it also stops the children from getting bored with them.
The Dough Gym group changes as and when the children need it. If all children are working on fine motor skills then the Dough Gym group can be used for fine motor exercises and as part of the rotating groups.
Sessions last for no more than 10 minutes.
As the children become more proficient in their skills then we increase the dexterity challenge of the activities that we offer them. We record this progress to show evidence of how our environment, planning and intervention is having a direct impact on attainment.

17. How do we know what each child needs?
Our first job is to assess the children. We need to know what stage they are at so that we can provide the correct activities.
We do this by assessing their grip using a ‘grip progress chart’:
Grip 1
Grip 2
Grip 3
Grip 4

18. Catering for the needs of every child…
We can see on our grip progress chart exactly where the children are in their development. As they improve their name moves down the board.
Each ‘grip stage’ is linked to their pivotal stage, for example, a child at grip stage 1 is still operating from the shoulder. They are not yet ready to hold a pencil effectively, they simply do not have the strength or the skill. Such children will be in the Dough Gym group where they can develop the correct skills needed to progress onto grip stage 2.

19. Time to have a go!

20. How you can help at home…
So many of our Funky Fingers activities are simply made from household equipment and items which are cheap and easy to obtain.
Your child loves taking part in the activities at school and you could extend this at home by providing similar activities and by using a timer to encourage your child to have a race against you to see who could ‘ balance the most marbles on the golf tees’, etc…
Dough is extremely easy to make and provides such a huge range of opportunities for developing both gross and fine motor skills.

21. Ideas to try at home…

22. Useful Links
Many of our fine motor activity ideas come from Pinterest …a site where people share good ideas (about anything and everything!) Just type in ‘fine motor activities’ or ‘Funky fingers activities’ into the search box.
The man behind the Dough Gym and Funky Fingers concept is an early years consultant called Alistair Bryce Clegg. He inspires much of our practice within FS1 and his approach to early years is one we all aspire to. You can find out more about Alistair and his approach at:

23. Dough Ideas and Recipes

24. Dough Ideas and Recipes

25. Dough Ideas and Recipes

26. Dough Ideas and Recipes

27. Thank you for attending our workshop. We hope you found it useful!
FS1 Team
Any Questions?