Children’s fine motor skills are interwoven with their daily lives. Most daily activities, ranging from brushing teeth, washing faces, eating to writing, making handicrafts, require the skillful use of fingers and hands. If their fine motor skills are not fine enough, their self-care, playing and in-class learning abilities will also be impaired. For children with fine motor developmental delay, early and proper training provided by parents are instrumental in rectifying the problems. The publication, based on the clinical experience of the Occupational Therapist Team of Heep Hong Society, covers the fine motor development needs and objectives of children aged up to six, and is compiled of 134 intriguing parent-child activities, which enable children polish their fine motor skills with the aid of commonly used domestic devices and resources, and save parents extra expense for expensive toys. The publication was written by the Occupational Therapist Team of Heep Hong Society, and published by Sing Tao Publishing Ltd. Buy Now

The first ever pre-writing training app in Hong Kong developed by Heep Hong Society occupational therapist team – The Pre-writing Fun Journey app officially launches the second edition for free download! The Pre-writing Fun Journey 2 app has added two new categories and some new functions to help adults provide guidance to children in the activities. Children's writing ability could be affected by numerous factors. If a child's handwriting is full of mistakes, such as disproportionate components, clumsy pencil manipulation, missing characters and missing strokes, it might be attributed to his or her poor visual perceptual and visual-motor coordination abilities. The Pre-writing Fun Journey 2 app specifically is designed to address the training needs of children in areas of visual-perceptual and visual-motor coordination abilities. It consists of 960 pre-writing activities with three difficulty levels in eight categories, including form discrimination, figure-ground perception, spatial relations, visual closure, visual-motor coordination, visual sequencing and memory. Through the use of interactive games, and various visual and auditory stimulating effects, it serves to help children develop important pre-writing skills required for future learning. More new features: A new “Confirm” button in the activities to prevent children from choosing a random answer  Provide immediate feedback on whether the answer is correct or not to assist parents or teachers in guiding children Include illustrations of correct sitting and pen-holding postures Keep track of children's progress in the account records   The Pre-writing Fun Journey 2 app is now available for free download from Apple iTunes Store or Google Play Store by entering key words, such as “Heep Hong Society” or “Pre-writing Fun Journey 2”. To prevent eye strain, it is recommended to limit the time for playing this game to no more than 30 minutes each time and not to play on small screens such as that of mobile phones. The first edition of the Pre-writing Fun Journey app won the “Best Digital Inclusion (Product / Application) Certificate of Merit” in Hong Kong ICT Awards 2014 in recognition of its effectiveness in laying solid foundations for the development of handwriting skills of children of different abilities.

Our Occupational Therapist Team has conducted a research on the fine motor developmental assessment of 800 local children between 2007-2009 under the support from Hong Kong Polytechnic University and over 30 kindergartens and nurseries, and published the Hong Kong Preschool Children Fine Motor Developmental Assessment (HK-PFMDA) Examiner's Manual, the first-ever standardized assessment based on the normative data from local children, for occupational therapists to carry out assessment on children aged up to six. (Article on the Standardistion and Localisation of Preschool Children Fine Motor Developmental Assessment (Chinese version only)) The HK-PFMDA Examiner's Manual, partially sponsored by the Partnership Fund for the Disadvantaged, is complemented by Assessment Tools and available for registered occupational therapists only. For details, please click here. Click here to download order form  

In 2009, our Occupational Therapist Team published the Hong Kong Preschool Children Fine Motor Developmental Assessment (HK-PFMDA) Examiner's Manual, the first-ever Chinese standardised assessment based on the normative data from local children, for occupational therapists to carry out assessment on children. The Manual is widely adopted by occupational therapists since its publication. The awareness of early childhood rehabilitation service and early interference is raised in recent years. Occupational therapists need to carry out assessment for children so as to identify children with developmental delay and to provide professional training. The standardised and time-saving fine motor developmental assessment can help increasing the efficiency of therapists clinical work. Sponsored by Social Welfare Department's Social Welfare Development Fund, Heep Hong Society started the research project of Hong Kong Preschool Fine Motor Screening (HK-PFMST) in 2016. By carefully picking 36 screening test items from 87 HK-PRMDA assessment items; recollecting and analysing the fine motor development statistics of local children aged from 30 months to 6 years, the Society calculated cut-off score of sensitivity and specificity of each age group respectively. A fine motor screening test with high distinguishability and validity is established. The HK-PFMST Examiner's Manual is complemented by Assessment Tools and available for registered occupational therapists only. More details of HK-PFMDA and HK-PFMST, please click here or refer to the Chinese version. Click here to download order form