Tasks, where senses are used, represent a special challenge for children, because they demand maintaining the concentration, based on their own senses, and bigger awareness about certain sense. A sensory integration plays an important part here, since with its help the brain reshapes sensory stimuli and gives them meaning. Senses, especially sight and touch in young children, can be developed through play, where the child is having fun, learns and gets to know the world, which surrounds him. When playing the child uses various didactic games, one such toy is also a touch book, which in a fun way stimulates the child to learn different skills, especially fine motor skills.
We carried out a case study with a girl of two-and-a-half years with Apert syndrome. This is a rare genetic disturbance, which due to the distorted skull bones causes sensory difficulties, difficulties with sight, hearing and breathing, and due to fused fingers and toes hinders child’s movements. Above all it also causes deficiencies in fine motor skills in young children, which I assessed as less developed regarding the girl’s chronological age, and they also aren’t consistent with the knowledge about the development of fine motor skills, which were described in the theoretical part.
The purpose of the research was to create an individualized touch book, test it, observe the girl’s reaction and progress in the area of fine motor skills and analyse the influence of the book on her inclusion in the prescribed pre-school curriculum. 27 individual trials were carried out, where the girl tried and performed different didactical-playing tasks from the touch book with ten pages.
The results of the three months work with the girl have shown her progress with adopting the contents of the pre-school curriculum with adapted program. The progress is seen in better movability, skills and accuracy when holding the objects, more skilful tweezer grip and better coordination eye–hand and hand–hand. The progress is also seen in her independence when it comes to most daily routines (e. g. dressing, eating …). The interpretation of the acquired results have been corroborated with the direct observation and with the conversation with the girl’s specialized pedagogue. With the help of the acquired results I formed the guidelines for creating a new touch book and guidelines for a directed game for fine motor skills, with which we develop the fine motor skills in children with Apert syndrome. The mentioned guidelines are also useful for children with different difficulties with fine motor skills.
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