I just got a call from my son's Kindergarten teacher

by April
(Michigan)

saying that she is concerned with his Fine Motor Skills. She says that he is struggling with his writing and gets frustrated easily and wants to give up. He does not feel confident enough and he is not good at all with the scissors. I am going to try to do some of these fun exercises with him at home. Sometimes when I try to work with him at home, he gets frustrated with me too. He is left handed and he JUST turned 5 in Sept so I am hoping that he will mature a bit and improve in these areas soon with some hard work between him and I and his teacher.

Comments for I just got a call from my son's Kindergarten teacher

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Persevere!
by: OT Mom

Dear April,

Those calls from the teacher often come as a huge shock! I can sympathise!

You are doing the right thing in looking for ways to help him!

Your son is still very young, and boys are often slower to mature in fine motor skills as well as other school skills. And being left handed in a right handed world can also contribute to some delays in developing fine motor skills. So persevere with lots of fun games that don't feel like "work".

You can try some of the activities on these pages
https://www.ot-mom-learning-activities.com/letterformations-kindergarten-no-pencil.html and https://www.ot-mom-learning-activities.com/practice-spelling.html for fun ways that he can practice his letter formations and numbers without getting frustrated by his poor fine motor skills. And working on his scissor cutting skills is a good idea, as a precursor to developing his fine motor skills.

Well done on being a proactive parent and helping your child in the early years of school - many parents don't! Keep up the good work!

Thank you
by: April Hall

Thank you so much for the positive comments. I am trying. I do think that he is YOUNG and he will mature and get there. He JUST turned 5 in September....alot of these kids in his class are older than him. I thought over the summer he had gotten better with some things like snapping the buttons on his jeans, having enough upper strength and hand strength to get across the monkey bars by himself etc that he could not do at the start of summer, so he is coming along and he will get there with this also. I just feel bad for him and do not want him to become so frustrated that he don't want to go to school and thankfully he really likes it! I am going to try to work with him every other night at home so he doesn't feel like it is a chore. There are some great resources/ideas on this website that I printed out and took home. I can't wait to get started. His left handed scissors are in transit to be delivered to our home this week so we can get going on the cutting too. Thanks so much!

Pleasure!
by: OT Mom

Dear April,
You are absolutely on the right track, and I am so pleased you feel the website is helping you. Have fun doing all the things that can help fine motor skills!

Feel free to ask if you have any more questions!

:-)

Same here
by: Anonymous

I understand your concerns as well. My son is in kindergarten and his teacher had concerns over his scissor use and writing skills. However he is improving so we are just monitoring. Plus we are not even 2 months into school, also he didn't attend preschool or pre-k. This is his first experience in a structured school setting. I partly feel like teachers want kids to pretty much be all at the same level, which is a bit unfair, in my opinion. Kindergarten is a lot more fast paced now and any small delay, they want immediate intervention which is ok, but we also have to remember that kids develop at their own level. I'm sure they will catch up. We've been doing extra fine motor play at home as well.

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