Fine Motor & Handwriting Assessment
Common “red flags” that are often associated with children experiencing handwriting difficulties are:
- Writing is laborious or your child “hates” to write
- Holding a pencil awkwardly
- Presses too hard or too light
- Letter and number reversals
- Mixing up capitals and lowercases
- Poor spacing between words/letters
- Frequent erasures, sometimes ripping the paper
A Fine Motor & Handwriting Assessment includes clinical observations and varied standardized assessments to measure fine motor, visual motor, and visual perception skills that may be impacting school performance. The Print Tool ™, a formalized handwriting assessment, is also administered for children ages 6 to 8 (and sometimes older if appropriate). It is important for parents to provide schoolwork samples to be reviewed as part of this process.
Following this initial home visit, Sari will provide a brief typed report reviewing your child’s strengths & needs and suggested goals & solutions for remediation. Additionally, this report will include suggestions to create an optimal workspace and in-home tools to help your child achieve success. Following this process Sari can then have contact with teachers to provide support in the classroom.
Please note that this assessment does not include a formal evaluation of gross motor or sensory integration skills.
Full Developmental Evaluation
Sari typically recommends this comprehensive evaluation when a child presents with global delays in addition to fine motor skills.
These delays could include, but are not limited to
- Sensory processing concerns
- Decreased muscle tone, strength, and endurance that may impact physical skills
- Gross motor, clumsiness and coordination challenges
- Attention and focusing difficulties
- Feeding difficulties with infants & toddlers
- Self-help skills (i.e. getting dressed, brushing teeth, using utensils)
A Full Developmental Evaluation also includes a detailed typed report reviewing your child’s scores, strengths and areas of concern. Additionally, Sari will include treatment approaches best suited for your child, as well as appropriate therapeutic goals.
Sari will be happy to help you determine which evaluation is the best suited for your child.
Kinder Readiness Screening
A clinical screening designed to evaluate your child’s fine motor and graphomotor skills in readiness for their entry into kindergarten. This screening includes:
- Assessing a range of developmental skills, including scissor proficiency, pencil grip, coloring and drawing competence, and name writing proficiency.
- Discussion of a tailored program guaranteeing your child’s readiness for a successful transition to kindergarten.
- Creation of a classroom carryover program to provide to teaching staff
Executive Functioning Screening & Program Development
This service is for children of middle school ages (12+) that need to work on organization skills and increased independence in daily home and school routines
- Meet with child & parent(s) to discuss strengths, challenges, and goals for OT outcomes
- Program Development
- Parent Training
