Fine Motor Skills and Academic Achievement

Abstract

Fine motor skills are key in preschool education. These skills refer to those that require the movement of little muscles in hands, such as picking up pieces with tweezers or handwriting. Recent evidence has shown that those children with an appropriate fine motor skills development in the early childhood are expected to obtain a better academic achievement during the first years of primary education than those with delays or impairments in their fine motor skills. Thus, this chapter provides with an overview of the literature on this area, based on the most recent reviews, with a special focus on the graphomotor skills (i.e., handwriting) in the association between fine motor skills and academic achievement. Furthermore, the latest proposals aimed to improve fine motor skills and graphomotor skills are reviewed and assessed according to certain aspects which are considered relevant in the literature. Some guidelines for practitioners may be extracted.