Outcomes from program implementation

By Julie Kust and Miranda Toutenhoofd

Fine-motor development is a crucial and integral part of academic success. There are many milestones that must be met prior to learning how to write. These pre-writing skills, such as cutting and coloring, seem to be lacking in young children today. The time to develop foundation hand skills is limited, and children are being pushed to higher curriculum levels at younger ages. (Thompson, S. 2004. Handy Learning: Activities for hand development and curriculum enhancement)

Manitowoc Public School District in Manitowoc, WI, has approximately 550 early childhood and kindergarten students. There is a need to integrate activities within the classroom that strengthen and prepare these children's hands for the demands of school, including holding a pencil, writing, drawing, coloring and cutting with scissors. The therapy staff is currently working on integrating services into the regular and special education settings.

Implementation

We implemented the Handy Learning™ program in one preschool and one kindergarten classroom. This program, developed by Susan Thompson, is a child-driven form of intervention used to engage students in a variety of fine-motor activities daily. Used in the classroom, the activities can be aligned with current early childhood and kindergarten curricula. Handy Learning activities consist of familiar toys and games, selected for the grasp and manipulation patterns they elicit and their appeal to young children.

Handy Learning activities provide increased fine-motor opportunities and the ability to practice and generalize these skills. The overall program focuses on strengthening the hands, increasing fine-motor dexterity, educating teachers and making fine-motor activities easily accessible in the classroom setting.

In order to track fine-motor development and effectiveness of the Handy Learning program, pre and post tests were given. We assessed our preschool participants in the areas of basic shape formation and basic cutting skills. The kindergarten participants were assessed on letter legibility, sizing, spacing and formation. We surveyed teachers in both the early childhood and kindergarten classrooms to get their opinions.

Project and Outcome

We provided the early childhood classroom with two bins of toys and games from the Handy Learning program in two-week cycles. The kindergarten classroom had four bins per two-week cycle, for approximately one month.

Nine preschoolers aged three to five took part in the Handy Learning program. Before the bins were introduced, each child was asked to demonstrate his cutting skills by cutting on a line, circle, square, triangle and diamond, and then each was observed for his ability to draw shapes.

We used criteria from the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales-II to judge the tasks. At the start, the preschoolers had an average ability to cut one of the five shapes. After four weeks with the Handy Learning bins, the class average was two out of the five tasks. This change in cutting skills was statistically significant (t-test, p = .02). The preschoolers' ability to draw shapes also showed improvement, although this did not reach statistical significance. At the start, the nine preschoolers were able to copy an average of 2.4 of eight shapes. After four weeks of Handy Learning, their average was 3.1 (t-test, p = .24).

Fourteen kindergarten students also took part in the Handy Learning program. We measured their shape and letter formation using the Shore Handwriting Screening Tool. The kindergarteners' ability to form eight shapes improved from a class average of 5.92 to 6.8, a statistically significant change (t-test, p = .00). Their ability to form letters approached statistical significance with an improved average of 3.28 to 3.84 out of four letters (t-test, p = .08). The kindergarten students did not improve appreciably in their ability to form letters within boundaries.

Both the preschool and kindergarten teachers felt the students received the program well. The directions, especially those with pictures, were easy to follow; and the bins were easily incorporated into the typical school day.

The teachers also reported that many of the children requested to use the activities outside of the given set time. The teachers concluded that they would like to continue to implement the program for the remainder of the school year.

Impact

This program provided the collaborative team a good resource and a variety of activities to develop and generalize fine-motor skills necessary for educational development. Although our outcome exploration was not a true study of Handy Learning effectiveness, we were pleased to note progress in the children's skills during their month of participation in the program.

We hope that this project will inspire others in to implement the Handy Learning program in their classrooms. This program will help teachers understand the importance of developing a strong foundation of fine-motor skills as well as give students a jump start in increasing their academic readiness.

For more information: www.handylearning.com

Julie Kust, OTR, and Miranda Toutenhoofd, OTR, hold graduate certificates in school-based practice from Texas Woman's University. This exploration was conducted for their application project.