I'm not sure what I've shared about Sweet Pea's fine motor goals, but we have been working on a few things at home in addition to writing her name. Writing her name is actually something that is a few steps ahead of where she is, but that's okay. One of her IEP annual OT goals is to imitate up to 3 pre-writing strokes (vertical line, horizontal line, approximated single closed circle) and imitate intersecting lines. She is making good progress towards that goal, but since practically right after we made that goal she stopped doing single closed circles and started doing circle after circle after circle. Her outside school OT couldn't believe that she started doing that so consistently, but we all knew that we could get her back to single closed circles eventually. It's still a work in progress, but I find that by using the phrase "start...stop" she does very well almost every time. The video was supposed to show you the circles she was making, but the crayon color was a very poor choice so unless you REALLY squint and put your nose up to the computer screen...you probably can't see them.
But the video also shows her accomplishing her second IEP OT goal...Using adaptive strategies as needed (including but not limited to: adaptive scissors, varied materials to cut) Sweet Pea will use scissors with her right hand to snip material (paper, play-doh) held in her left with no more than minumal assistance (Sweet Pea does at least 75% of the task) in 4 out of 5 trials as measured by observation/data and staff report. We purchased the Maped Koopy Spring Scissors, but we don't use the spring anymore. I think if the scissors were just a little bit smaller she would have an easier time, but she is doing pretty good as is. I am going to speak with her OT about increasing this goal as I believe that she might have met it. There could be some piece that I'm missing, but she seems to be meeting the goal if you look at the video below.
This gives you an idea of why we work on some of these skills at home...she really enjoys it! We don't push. When she is done we let her be done. Sometimes we have her finish what she is working on just to teach her to complete tasks, but if her mood isn't open to that we just let her be. We don't want to risk losing her love of learning!
It seems like not that long ago we were at speech therapy with Loud Nina and Sweet Pea was just getting the hang of putting her fingers together to sign "more." I know I see her all the time, but it's still impressive to watch her do things like hold paper in one hand and cut it with the other!
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