All articles

This article analytically discusses questions of children’s fine motor skills (fingers and wrist) development, and the significance of finger gymnastics for language development in children. Verbal and non-verbal components of communication are examined. Developmental milestones of fine motor skills for children from birth to primary school are pinpointed. Particularities and weaknesses of fine motor skills of children with speech disorders are distinguished. Specialized strategies for promoting the children’s fine motor development are offered. Positive results are expected upon the systematic implementation of finger gymnastics. The author characterizes the different types of finger gymnastics: passive, passive-active and active. The article gives recommendations on how to incorporate finger gymnastics into everyday life. It also gives a brief description of the types of finger games.

The article deals with the question of providing assistance to kindergarten children with severe speech disorders, in particular, with the mild form of dysarthria. Preschool educational organization may include children whose speech is slurred, gibberish, accelerated and inexpressive. These children refuse to recite poetry at matinees, and show a lack of motor dexterity at music and physical education lessons. Many children who suffer from obliterated dysarthria, have a poor command of self-service skills, they are often found to have fine motor skill disorders. Thus, the defect structure in the light form of dysarthria includes not only speech problems, but also those involving the psychological and motor speech basis. The mild case of dysarthria, which is mainly manifested in unintelligible speech in preschool years, becomes complicated by written language acquisition difficulties at school age. Many teachers regard these mistakes as errors due to inattention, but these errors stem from a speech disorder – obliterated dysarthria when children are observed to articulate speech sounds in an unclear or blurred way. All this prevents them from learning their school subjects successfully. At the same time, speech therapists and specialists, kindergarten teachers and parents are in a position to help a child with obliterated dysarthria as early as in his preschool period. They can eliminate the disturbances that hamper clear and distinct speech, and remove the preconditions for written speech disorders in children. The article examines questions of how to detect nonverbal disorders and to overcome them in a kindergarten.