After a recent parent/teacher meeting, my DS4.5's teacher told us that his fine motor skills needed work and improvement. She was concerned that his grip might be weak.
This concern arose because on tasks like coloring and cutting, he was significantly slower than the other kids in completing the tasks. She did consider the possibility that he might be too focused on doing the tasks perfectly.
Based on our own observations, there's no issue with his grip strength. However, he is slow because he is focused on being precise. When coloring, he makes sure that he stops at the line, goes back and eliminates any white spaces while systematically working left to right. Things like that take time. When we ask him to just work as fast as he can, he does but it's nowhere near as precise. On another task, he wasn't able to finish on time because he was incorporating a colored pattern into his work and it just took longer than using a single color.
We're not sure what to tell him. We want him to get the work done quickly but we don't want to tell him to sacrifice his focus on the details. Not at this age, at least. I guess I'm looking for suggestions on teaching speed without sacrificing precision and suggestions on how to present this to the teachers while still giving them time to address it on their own?
Last edited by philly103; 10/27/18 07:06 AM.
