Apps for Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills are the ability to make precise movements with the wrist and fingers. Fine motor involves strength, dexterity and all other uses of the wrist, hands and fingers. A deficit in fine motor skills affects many school activities. Fine motor skills develop from a fisted grasp and large movements at age 2 and it develops quickly  by the time a child is 4. Then they have a tri-pod grip and can copy a square. Pencil grip and letter formation are established by grade 3 or 4. A remediation program is usually implemented when troubles with fine motor become evident. Below are a list of apps that help develop fine motor skills and develop other skills as well. 

The iPad had a number of apps that can help develop fine motor skills including pre-writing and writing skills. One called Dexteria has three great apps.

Tap It uses finger isolation to wok on dexterity. You place your hand on the screen and tap a coloured icon with each finger, one at a time. It times and records your performance so it can be tacked.

Pinch It  is a game where students pinch objects with the fingers and thumb to develop dexterity and pinching ability.

Write it follows Handwriting Without Tears program for letter formation and teaches students proper letter formation. You can use your finger to trace letters on the screen but using a stylus (and specialized stylus) promotes proper tri-pod grip.

Bugs and Buttons  is an app that also develops fine motor skills but also teaches counting, sorting, categorizing and other basic skills. It focuses on pinch and grab motion. It is vary motivating as well and would keep a student engaged.

Piano Playing can be used with one or two hands and can be used like a traditional piano. It focuses on finger isolation and fine motor control.

Injini is an app that has activities developed by teachers to assess young children. It has visual motor and patterning aspects as well as fine motor and pre-writing skills. The tracing game is programmed by levels to reflect development of line skills development for writing. It starts with vertical lines and advances to more complex shapes. Frog is a game where you control the frog’s tongue to catch insects to develop fine motor and pencil grip.

Touch and Write allows you to trace individual letters to promote fine motor control and to learn letters. The game gives you rewards and you can write with different things such as icing or pumpkin pie. You can program words to be traced as well. This could be used to personalize a program with target words.

Shape Builder is a 99 cent app that reinforces pre-writing skills and pencil grip. It uses fine motor skills.

Write Pad helps older students with written output who have low motivation. The app converts writing to text. You can use printing or cursive. It is engaging to have it converting it to text in front of you. You can pull up a keyboard to assist if the program does not recognize a letter. You can specify a language and you can use word prediction. There is a lot of depth to this app.

Cars 2 car mate uses a toy car as the stylus to drive through streets. You are manipulating the car and using proper pressure. It is extremely engaging and motivating. The app is free but you buy the cars.

Scribble Beard is an app for fine motor. You use a stylus. It animates what you draw. You can select pencil or crayon so you can colour your drawing. It gears to the creativity of the child. This app is $2.99.

When using these apps, promote the use of all fingers and the thumb and the use of the stylus, not just index fingers. The user also has to use a proper degree of pressure, which is also a fine motor skill. The use of a stylus is highly recommended to develop proper grip for writing.

All of these apps get me really excited. Just last year, I did fine motor activities in a Learning Centre and I was using clothes pins, crayons, tweezers and puff balls and other low-tech materials. They were good for fine motor but not all that engaging. These apps blow these older techniques out of the water for engagement and motivation.