Pre-Writing and Fine Motor Skills
These links and suggestions were crowdsourced from Yammer
Therapy Street for Kids
A comprehensive website for OT with lots of ideas -Ena Lakisoe
Kids Play Smarter
Learn, Play, Imagine
Early Stage 1 Fine Motor Skills program
Variety of Ideas
Writing on vertical surfaces improves upper body strength/stamina, which improves stability/posture etc when writing.
Tweezer activities for pincer grip.
I have a pack of smiley face stress balls that I use for some kids before writing just to warm up their hands. Ronda Field
Using wooden pegs and opening and closing them with forefinger and thumb is good for building hand strength.
I've also used pick up sticks as a fine motor warm up.
Paint (or even food dye, flour and water!) in a ziplock bag is another tactile activity, kids write on the bag and see their shapes. Bag needs to be zipped up tightly though with little air inside!!! Marni Patterson
Also moving things from left to right and top to bottom. Kim Kelly (any manipulative would do)
Pick up pencil using correct grip and caterpillar crawl fingers from the bottom to the top of the pencil and back again. Dont let the pencil wobble! Also using correct grip rotate the pencil clockwise and anticlockwise. Again, keep the pencil from wobbling. Picking things up with chopsticks is a fun way to improve f m skills too. Jo Fairclough
We did lots of muscle strengthening skills such as picking up marbles between the fingers one at a time, then two and so on.
Threading activities such a macaroni on string and then progress to threading through plastic letters bought through educational experience.
We've used the ziplock bag activity too, but I used hair gel with a drop or two of food colouring to make bright bags that last ages.
You can then place letter cards below to guide students. Laura Chaffey
Kids also love writing in shaving foam or some equivalent.
Agree with the sand and play dough ideas, and threading.
My mum also used to use old sewing cards that had been hole punched with different sized holes for different abilities. Merryn Whitfield
My other favourite that I don't think was suggested is chopsticks. We use them to pick up various items starting with easy ones like spongy letters or shapes and move on to more difficult ones including uncooked rice . I make it a game of counting or making a word or picture so we get another kla at the same time. Lisa Wright
Dexteria iPad app
works on pincer grip, finger isolation and other fine motor skills- Ronda Field