Positive Relationships: Home learning - In hand

For whatever reason, most parts of the UK introduce children to writing earlier than in the rest of the world. While this remains controversial, with many believing it is potentially detrimental to later development, the reality is that practitioners need to support children's hand-eye co-ordination.

This is easier said than done as, anecdotally, children are coming into early years settings with lower levels of hand function than might have been expected before. So what can early years settings do?

ROUTINES

A good starting point is to look at the daily routine in a setting. This is because movements do need to be practised and, if they are built into the fabric of the routine, children are guaranteed to have made them. While one-off activities may be fun for children and promote movements, they may not provide this regular practice.

A good exercise to see what in-built opportunities already exist with your routine is to track one child's hand-eye co-ordination movements during routine events such as at meal times, tidying up or washing hands. Through this analysis, it is easy to pick up missed opportunities such as children not regularly laying their own place at the table or babies not being given enough time to self-feed.

You may also pick up on unintended barriers that are preventing children from being able to show effective movements. A good example of this is when it comes to self-serving. While many settings do encourage children to pour their own drinks, sometimes the jugs are too large or the tables too high, forcing children into making awkward movements or giving up.

TEACHING

Some hand-eye co-ordination activities need demonstrating to children, and there is clearly a case to be made for structured teaching to be put in place for skills such as the use of scissors. While some children do manage to work out for themselves how best to use scissors, many become frustrated when left to their own devices.

There is more than one way to help children master the use of scissors, but I like the Montessori approach, which usually begins with children being given opportunities to snip at strips of paper and so gives them success early on.

Of course, any specific teaching needs to be done when we are sure that children have the prerequisite skills to benefit, and it must be enjoyable and child-centred.

PRECISION IN PLAY

Traditional opportunities for children to gain hand-eye co-ordination skills also come through play activities. Sand, water and construction play all provide useful chances for children to master movements, but it is worth thinking about how we enable children to show greater precision.

Although filling up a beaker of water may be challenging for a two-year-old, and may continue to remain enjoyable for the same child at four, it is important to reflect on whether it is providing opportunities for precision and thus progression.

Happily, it is fairly easy to encourage more precise movement by, for example, changing the scale of resources or bringing out resources that are new to children.

AT HOME

The skills of hand-eye co-ordination are not just promoted in early years settings. Traditionally, children have learnt them at home by being involved in daily tasks such as laying the table, folding washing or drying plates.

While these are chores for adults, for young children they often provide pleasurable opportunities to be part of 'adult land'. There are other benefits too in these days when some families spend little time together; they allow children and parents to come together and talk.

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