Fine motor skill development: ABC Sand!!!

So I am very excited as I sit here writing today’s post. This afternoon I sat down with Master 5 like I do everyday to do some fine motor skill therapy and we made a breakthrough!!!

Master 5 knows his alphabet. In just one week!!! Last Tuesday after therapy I was discussing his session with his teacher at school and we were both commenting on his inability to retain information. He was unable to recognise his letters let alone any words.

She mentioned that we would have to focus on that this year so that he does not fall any further behind. Now I know that children all learn at a different pace, but we have been working on his alphabet non stop for 6 months now with no results.

So you can imagine my surprise when I pulled out this afternoons activity and he began to sing an alphabet song I had not heard before. Now I have been singing him the traditional ABC, won’t you come and sing with me? song for ages with no success, he wouldn’t even sing along.

This song focuses on the sound that each letter makes, for eg: E E E eggs in the pan! Hard to explain in writing. But he sat their singing his little song and even picking up the corresponding letter as he went. I nearly fell of my chair. Although when I said the letter correctly instead of the sound he didn’t know which one I was talking about, but he knows the sound. This is huge.

I was so excited. After talking about his song for a little bit, I realised he does not know all of the alphabet sounds but he has at least 15 of them. I plan on visiting with his teacher tomorrow and getting a copy of the song so we can play it at home and practice until he has them all down.

We then got down to the activity at hand. I picked this pack up at my local Kmart in the yellow sticker section and it cost a massive $2. Best bargain ever. It incorporated everything my boy needed to practise this week. It contains four little tubs of extra hard magic sand, 26 letter moulds and an activity tray.

The children have to fill each letter mould by gently pinching tiny bits of the sand and filling the inside. This is actually quit difficult. If you put to much in it causes an air pocket and the letter won’t come out properly formed, they just collapse. So you have to fill them very carefully and slowly which is fantastic for fine motor development.

This sand is also extra hard making he process that much more difficult. Master 5 did struggle to fill his moulds correctly but after a few attempts he finally got the hang of it and was very excited when he made the letter L so well that he was able to stand it up on its own without it collapsing.

This year we are meant to be focusing on five minute therapy activities but this seemed to be going so well that we stuck at it for a while. In he end Master 5 made five letters all up, although he did have to make some of them a couple of times before they maintained their shape.

Miss 3 and Miss 1 also got into the ABC Sand magic this afternoon. Miss 3 dominated this activity. She has excellent fine motor skills and only needed help to get her letters to pop out of their moulds. She had a great time and even made a word.

Miss 1 did not understand he activity at all but she had a great time playing with the magic sand and building up her own fine motor skills. She loved squishing it through her fingers and burying the letter that I had given her. I tried to help her so she could make one letter however she smashed it as a soon as it came out of the mould lol. Typical, her way or no way.

They loved this activity and i promised that if they could manage to keep the sand on their trays that they could play it again tomorrow. This is an activity I would normally do outside however due to the heat that’s just not possible here at the moment. They all managed to make minimal mess, mainly I think because the sand was so firm it was quite difficult to pull apart.

This activity combines everything we have been working on at the moment, fine motor skill development, the alphabet and patience. It was fun and very easy to engage all the children, not to mention how low cost it was.

As always I love your feedback and any fine motor skill development idea that you have and would like to share please do so in the comments.

Thanks for reading.

@mumofmany.