3 to 4: Little Fingers at Work
Everyday activities like dressing up and playing games help preschoolers develop the physical skills needed for school.
Hannah, a 3-year-old, carefully undoes the big buttons on her sweater by guiding them through the slits in the fabric. Hannah is practicing her fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. This kind of practice will come in handy later when she’s learning to hold a pencil or a pair of scissors in school.
Getting a Grip
Three- and 4-year-olds are still fine-tuning their pincer grasp; they can practice by undoing buttons like Hannah, zipping and unzipping zippers, picking up Legos or finger foods, and stringing beads. Strengthening the pincer grasp is an important step because it prepares your child for learning to hold pencils, markers, crayons, and paintbrushes, which helps develop her predrawing and prewriting skills.
Wrist control and finger strength are also important parts of mastering the use of writing and drawing utensils. Fitting pieces into a puzzle develops the dexterity of your child’s hand and wrist. So does scrambling eggs with a whisk and pouring milk from a small pitcher into a glass for breakfast.
The Next Step
When kids start to draw, 3-year-olds have great fun scribbling in an uninhibited manner, making big zigzag lines and circles. Around age 4, your child may start to create drawings of recognizable objects—such as a house or a dog—instead of treating the crayon like it’s a toy race car zooming back and forth across the page. As 4-year-olds gradually start to join curved lines, circles, and straight lines in their drawings of people, buildings, and trees, they are showing a readiness to begin making the basic strokes necessary for writing. Older preschoolers love experimenting with connecting shapes and lines into letter forms. They particularly enjoy practicing writing and “reading” familiar letters. And, of course, they will use all kinds of manipulative materials, such as sticks and mud or Q-tips dipped in water, to try to write the letters of their names.
Tips:
• Collect items such as pebbles, stones, twigs, and buttons with your child. Encourage him to use his pincer grasp to pick them up for use in art collages or counting games.
• Provide clay or play dough for your child to strengthen her finger muscles while she pokes, pinches, and rolls these flexible modeling mediums.
• Take care not to tire out or frustrate your child by requiring him to form letters perfectly or “stay in the lines” while coloring before his fine motor skills have fully developed.
Susan A. Miller, Ed.D., a veteran teacher and director, is a professor of early childhood education at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, and author of the Problem Solving Safari series of teaching guides.
