Motoric skills are essentials for the kindergarteners. A 5-year kid develops gross motoric skills when she/he :
* Walks backward with heel-toe pattern
• Hops
• Balances on alternate feet with eyes closed
• Uses hands more than arms to catch a ball
• Jumps down three or four steps
• Jumps rope
• Roller skates

fine motoric?
• Ties shoe laces
• Copies a triangle
• Prints a few letters or numbers crudely
• Draws a person with six parts
• May print first name
• Uses hammer to hit a nail
• Uses scissors and some tools such as a screwdriver
• Folds paper diagonally
• Does simple puzzles quickly and smoothly
• Builds structures out of large boxes

Somehow, living in a country like Indonesia, the 5-year are necessarily prepared for the readiness for literacy.They need to develop dynamic tripod finger posture which consists of the ability to use of thumb, index and middle finger as the tripod while the fourth and the fifth finger as support. For such skills, they do not have to tortured by pencil or crayon holding drill. Guess what?

First, they can have more fun practicing by :
- touching each finger to the thumb ( you could ask them singing while doing it)
- finger painting which allows them to dipp in each finger in a paint and somehow using their tips of finger to create something
- arranging beads

These modern beads are not too expensive, but hygenic and non-toxic. They call it "Hama Beads" . They have many hama boards such as car (as in the picture)or plan, bear or house with colorful beads make it perfect for eye-hand coordination practice. The older the children get, you could give him/her smaller size of beads.

After that, the children could put an oil paper on the hama beads and have it ironed to make it more challenging and attractive.

Dare to try?

Sources:
http://extension.unh.edu/Family/documents/ec345_phys.pdf
Pediatric Home Care By Wendy L. Votroubek, Julie Townsend ,1997
http://www.moolka.com/jzv/prod?o=epinions&prodId=20006