Carmen Knight, M.A.T., Early Childhood and Special Education

Let's face the fact that summer can get hot! Finding fun, educational items that also provide a bit of relief for the heat will help make therapy sessions successful. SmileMakers has a line of water squirter toys that can help your patients that need assistance in the area of fine motor skills, hand strengthening, and visual motor skills.

Fine motor skills are so important for children to develop. Improving fine motor skills helps children be able to feed themselves, hold a pencil or use their fingers to pull up a zipper. Work on fine motor skill goals by using these Fun Fish Water Squirters to strengthen hands and fingers. Holding the toy and pulling the lever to squirt the water will help little hands get strong enough to take on everyday tasks. Your patient will have a great time making these fish squirt water.

Hand strength is vital for a child to be able to function in the classroom with age-appropriate skills such as writing with a pencil, using scissors and dressing themselves. Ask the child to use the water squirter to create a certain shape or try to fill a shape on a piece of construction paper. Using the squirter to gain hand strength is fun.

Visual motor skills are important to a child's development by improving their hand eye coordination. Hand eye coordination is important because it allows the child to follow the movement of an object which improves the child's ability to scan and track. This helps the child learn and improve on the important skill of reading. A creative way to work on visual motor skills is to draw a chalk circle on the sidewalk or driveway and see if the child can aim and get the water in the circle. This activity works fine motor as well as visual motor skills because it will take hand eye coordination for the child to hit the target. Join in on the fun and make it a competition to see whose aim is better. Or have a water squirt toy 'fight' to beat the summer heat. Be sure to reward the child with praise and cheers with each squirt. In the end, it's all about improving developmental skills in a fun atmosphere.