Fine movements refer to the movements of the hands and fingers, including large grasps, pinching fingers, and some simple techniques.
Early fine motor training in children with autism mainly involves the ability to coordinate hands and eyes, the ability to grasp objects with their fingers, and the ability to coordinate the simultaneous movement of both hands.
According to the actual situation of children's development and the characteristics of autistic children, the fine motor training of autistic children can be divided into the following parts.
Early fine motor training at 2-3 years old
Clamp training
Put some small objects such as bean grains, stones, peanuts and rice in a box, let the child use tweezers or chopsticks to clip out and put it on the table, and then re-clip the clip on the ground back into the box after all the clips are completed, you can compete with the child. The objects that are clipped in this process should change from large to small, from less to more.
Twist training
Take some used bottles and have the child screw the cap, tighten or loosen it.
Dial abacus training
Take an abacus and let the child use his hand to dial the abacus up and down, not only one by one, but also let him dial several or rows or rows at the same time.
You can use one hand to dial, or you can use both hands to flick on the abacus at the same time.
When dialed, the abacus beads collide to make a sound, making them willing to use their hands to dial, and the effect is also very good.
Kneading training
Prepare some flour, water and a basin and mix the water and flour into a clay form in the basin with your child.
After the dough is kneaded, some colored additives can be added to guide them to make various shapes of objects such as puppies and villains by hand.
Flip drills
Reading picture books with children is almost every family will do, at this time, encouraging children to turn pages with their own hands is the most natural and effective fine training.
The purpose is only to exercise the child's finger strength and wrist strength, so whether the child reads the content or not, as long as he can turn down vigorously, even if it is several pages at a time, it does not matter, with the strengthening of finger flexibility, it will gradually be from thick to thin page by page.
Tearing and rubbing training
For example, take some used paper, outdated books, paintings, etc. to let children tear, encourage them to tear boldly, and tear the better, because the more torn the child's finger skills, the higher the requirements, indicating that the stronger the pinching force between the thumbs and index fingers of their hands.
You can also take some stiff paper or rags for your child to rub or roll, which can exercise the flexibility of their fingers and exercise wrist strength.
Parents can also let their children learn to scrub with their hands while washing clothes, which can also play a role in training their finger skills.
Fine motor training for 4-5 years old+
Origami training
This is one of the best ways to exercise the hand skills and hand dexterity of children with autism.
When you first practice origami, children may not be flexible, so don't worry about this, slowly teach them to fold step by step.
It's best if you fold one step and let him imitate one step at a time, teaching only one step at a time.
When they learn each step, they can connect several steps from beginning to end to fold into a finished product.
The difficulty of origami depends on the child's situation.
Drawing lines practice
The way to draw lines is varied and eclectic.
At first, children often do not hold a pen, and they must first be taught the correct posture of holding the pen.
On this basis, encourage children to use pens to draw randomly on paper, as long as they can draw on the Tao, overcome their fear of writing and drawing, and further teach children to draw points and lines (horizontal lines, vertical lines, diagonal lines, etc.).
When your child has the ability to control finger movements, teach them to draw graphics.
There are several ways to do this:
(1) Use a pen of a different color from the original line to draw on the drawn line, such as the original blue stroke, let the child use a red pen to draw on it.
(2) Let the child use a pen different from the original color to draw on the dotted line (vertical line, horizontal line).
(3) Parents use dense different dots to draw some object shapes that children often see in their daily lives, such as peaches, apples, eggplants, bananas, etc., and then let the children use pens different from the original color to connect into objects.
(4) Draw two parallel lines, let the child draw a horizontal line or a vertical line inside the drawn limit line. The distance between two limit lines can range from narrow to wide.
(5) Let the child listen to the instructions to draw lines alternately. For example, if you draw a vertical line or a horizontal line, let the child draw a vertical line or horizontal line next to each other; you draw a vertical line, let the child draw a horizontal line or cross the line, and so on. In this way, drawing lines is more playful and interesting, and children are more willing to cooperate.
Draw circles and arcs for training
Here's how:
(1) Parents draw a circle and let the child draw on the circle with a pen different from the original color.
(2) The guy draws a circle with a dotted line in that one and lets the child draw along the dotted line.
(3) Parents draw circles with dots and let children connect dots into circles.
(4) Parents and children alternately draw circles. For example, you draw a circle first, and then let the child draw a circle; you draw a large (small) circle, let the child draw a small (large) circle; you draw a small circle, let the child draw a large circle outside the small circle, and so on.
When your child learns to draw circles, teach him to draw arcs.
Arcs are large and small, when the first teaching can draw the arcs larger, so that children are easy to identify, but also easy to draw, and then slowly draw short, small.
While teaching children to draw arcs, they are described in figurative language, such as: "This is like a small bridge, a small bridge bends, across both sides of the river." "This is easy to mobilize the enthusiasm of autistic children to draw." The practice is like drawing a circle.
Learn to draw graphics training
When children learn to draw dots, lines, circles and arcs, that is, after having a certain foundation in painting, they should lose no time in teaching them to learn to draw graphics. At the beginning, the drawing should not be too difficult, but should be as simple as possible, such as drawing the sun, moon, biscuits, toothbrushes, teacups, pens, knives, etc.
In the future, the difficulty of the figure will be appropriately increased according to the child's drawing, such as teaching small animals, people, houses, tables, stools, etc.
When teaching children to learn to draw graphics, try to draw some objects that children often touch or use in their daily lives.
Such as apples, peaches, pears, bananas, watermelons, etc. in fruits; tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, peppers, pumpkins, etc. in vegetables; tables, stools, chairs, beds, etc. in furniture; dogs, cats, chickens, ducks, geese and so on in animals.
In this way, autistic children are easy to resonate with their existing psychological appearances when painting, easy to think, willing to do, and realistic in painting.
At the same time, it further imposes their understanding of life and cultivates a love of life.
Learn to write Chinese characters for practice
The strokes of Chinese characters are complex, and their spatial configuration and structure are also inconsistent, which provides different content for exercising the finger skills of autistic children.
When teaching children to write Chinese characters, they can initially be asked to draw red, but the mold of red should not be too small at the beginning, and should be from large to small, step by step. The difficulty of Chinese characters and the number of strokes also depend on the child's completion, and should also follow the rules from simple to complex.
When they have a certain writing foundation and experience, they further guide the children to write into the square, that is, the field grid.
At the beginning, you can design your own Tianzi grid, and its specifications are also from large to small, and finally meet the standards in the Tianzi Grid.
The Chinese characters taught are preferably the names of simple objects that are often exposed to in daily life, such as "rice", "melon", etc., and are accompanied by appropriate pictures or objects of objects, and fully give "marks".
You can also learn to write Arabic numerals up to 100 and capitalized "one, two, three, four、...... ten" and their own names, etc. For some of the more difficult Chinese characters to write, a step-by-step teaching method can be adopted.
Paper-cut training
Teaching children with autism to cut paper with scissors is also a good way to train the skills and functions of the hand.
The use of scissors focuses on the force of the thumb and index finger, and the thumb and index finger play an important role in the entire process of finger grasping, holding and holding, so the use of scissors is of great significance.
At the same time, the use of scissors to cut paper is also a good visual and dynamic coordination process, it requires close cooperation between the eyes and fingers to cut out the desired look.
Before training children to cut paper, it is best to take some toy scissors made of plastic to do closing and opening exercises, that is, first learn to use the posture of scissors and the size of the finger force.
On this basis, it is cut with a bald head (round head) and scissors with a thicker blade but can cut paper.
For safety reasons, do not use scissors that are too sharp.
The specific paper-cutting method is as follows:
(1) Take a moderate thickness of paper and let the child use scissors to cut as he pleases, without restraint, as long as the paper can be cut open or cut off.
(2) Draw a horizontal or diagonal line on the paper and let the child cut the paper along the line. This method of cutting is more difficult than before, the child may deviate from the drawing line when cutting, do not blame them, and patiently teach and encourage him to be bold in cutting.
(3) Parents draw an arc or circle on the paper and let the child cut along the line. At the beginning, the arc or circle should not be too small, and then slowly change from large to small, step by step.
(4) Draw some simple shapes on paper such as spoons, chopsticks and other large outlines of small animals, or find some simple figures in scrap pictorial newspapers for children to cut out.
Spelling out the graphics exercises
Draw simple figures of people or various small animals with a pencil or pen on it with a stiffer piece of paper or cardboard, and then cut them along several large sections.
Take these cut and scrambled figures and let the children use their hands to fight, so as to exercise the child's finger movement ability and hand-eye coordination.
In addition to the above specific methods, it can also guide autistic children (one-handed or two-handed) to play the piano (pedal organ, piano, electronic keyboard), etc., which can also play a good role in exercising finger flexibility.