Working and Sleeping Fingers

Hello Parents,

This is the second week of the occupational therapy kindergarten program. It was wonderful getting to meet the children and it was a great deal of fun to use music and painting in order to introduce the spatial directions of right and left.  We will continue to reinforce these concepts and with your help the children will become comfortable with these directional labels.  Many of the children are quite comfortable with right and left concepts already so this is just a reintroduction to them.

This week we will be talking about the “Smart” fingers or the “working” fingers; the thumb, pointer, and middle fingers, and the “Sleeping” fingers or the “helping” fingers; the ring and little fingers. This discussion is important because it helps the children understand that the “smart or working” fingers are used for holding a pencil, using a scissor, and pinching laces or picking up small objects.  The “sleeping” or helping fingers “ are important for balance in the hand as well as for strength, for example opening large jars or using a hammer, etc.  One needs both sides of the hand in order to complete many tasks. We do not pay attention to how the hand works in order to button a button, but if you stop and think about it you can see how important it is for the fingers to work in harmony.

Play with your child using large and small objects, coins, buttons, containers, blocks, dice, markers, crayons, pencils, scissors etc. Encourage children to use eating utensils; this everyday activity is very helpful in developing hand skill.  

Additional activities: Tearing newspaper and then using “balled” up pieces as basketballs to throw in trash bag, Plant or water sprayers can be used for a wide variety of activities, tweezers are great for picking up tiny objects, lacing activities are also wonderful for developing pinch, eye droppers can be used for bathtub games or even for dribble pictures, tissue paper pictures can be made by filling in the shapes with rolled up tissue paper as mentioned coins and buttons can be great for placing in a bank . Cooking activities are wonderful because they require the use of utensils that are different sizes and shapes. Tiny “Waterfall” games can also be used to develop grasp and children usually love them.

Again, have fun and enjoy these play times with your children.  Remember we will encourage the children to develop these skills in the everyday tasks in kindergarten but it is always helpful to do these things at home.  Children develop their hand skills over time and with practice. Practice is PLAY, the more the better.

Thanks,

Janet Kaplan MS OTR/L