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There are a lot of activities that you can do with your child to help enhance their fine and gross motor skills. Many people don’t realize how these skills affect a child. The development of fine and gross motor skills allows them to perform better in other, more academic and physical ways.

Fine motor skills are those skills that allow you to develop the ability to do such things as write and manipulate small objects. Try these simple activities to help your children along the way.

- Painting. Try to alternate between large, stubby brushes and smaller, finer brushes. The smaller the brush is, the more control they need over their hands. Also try getting them to do some painting with cotton swabs. This affords some really fine work and allows them to develop their pincer grip; needed for learning how to write

- Puzzles. For younger children; start them off with large peg puzzles. These are puzzles that have the little knob sticking out of each puzzle piece. This allows them to garner more control over their finger movement. For starter puzzles you can buy them with very large knobs that require a full fisted grip then you can move onto the puzzles that require a thumb and forefinger grip (pincer grip).

- Playdough. Children will get some great fine motor skill exercise out of Playdough especially if you add some extra equipment such as rollers and cookie cutters.

- Cutting. Bring out the scissors and some old magazines and let them get to work. Cutting requires a lot of coordination. For younger children who are just getting used to manipulating scissors, you can buy them without any metal. They are sharp enough to cut through paper but not much else.

- Threading. Buy some beads to thread or use some colored pasta and string. This activity requires a lot of control and a steady hand. Perfect practice for fine motor development.

- Blocks. Start out with larger blocks and move your way towards the smaller variety. The smaller the blocks, the more control they need to develop. But be careful not to introduce blocks that are small too quickly – they will only get frustrated and give up.

Gross motor skills are big motor skills; i.e. running, jumping and hopping etc. They require balance and coordination. Try some of these activities.

- Running. Create a game that requires moving quickly. This is great for encouraging the development of gross motor coordination.

- Climbing. Take them to the park and let them climb all over the jungle gyms. Climbing is an innate characteristic of children. You may have noticed it when they started climbing the coffee table as a toddler! Each time they try, they will get a little better because they are developing those important gross motor muscles.

- Hopping. Try a game of hopscotch. All that maybe hopping about is developing some balance.

- Ball play. Kicking, rolling and throwing are some great ways to encourage gross motor development and you don’t need anything more that a ball and a little bit of room. Smaller balls require a little finer control but you should aim to get a ball that is easily picked up. A very large ball for a younger child can be difficult to manipulate and get very frustrating.

- Batting. Get out the baseball bat and polish up your batting skills. This is a hard one for kids to master but well worth the reward. Try a bigger, thicker bat to start with and work your way up to a smaller one. You can also try tennis, golf or racquetball.

In the United States, homeschooling is the focus of a substantial movement among parents who wish to provide their children with a custom or more complete education, which they feel is unattainable in most private schools or the government's public schools. While millions of families in the U.S. are educating their children at home, tens of millions of families still prefer an institutional setting for their children.

As an alternative means of primary and secondary education, homeschooling has proven increasingly popular in the United States. Despite its popularity, or perhaps because of it, some people have concerns about the recent renaissance of this traditional method of educating children. The general historic foundations of homeschooling originate with the informal education systems that existed in the United States before the rise of public schools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For example, famous figures such as Thomas Jefferson, Jane Austen, Abraham Lincoln, Geronimo and Louisa May Alcott might be considered to have been homeschooled as they were self-educated or had mentors or tutors growing up, but received little formal schooling.

In the United States, the "curriculum in a box" (or All-in-one curriculum) form of homeschooling dates back to 1906, when the Calvert Day School of Baltimore, Maryland made such materials available through a downtown Baltimore bookstore and a National Geographic advertisement. Within five years, nearly 300 children were making use of materials from Calvert's Home Instruction Department. In less than a century the materials had become the basis for lessons for more than 350,000 children annually in more than 90 countries.

Although estimates vary, roughly one to two million children are homeschooled in the United States, about 90,000 in the UK[1], and about 26,000 in Australia/New Zealand[2]. Individual motivations to homeschool, homeschooling methods, and results of homeschooling (both social and academic) are varied, and are the source of vibrant debate.

As educational choices become abundant through a vast array of educational products and services available, computers, and the internet, the idea of homeschooling is expanding in popularity and acceptance. Some state governments (e.g. Alaska, California, Pennsylvania, Utah and Kansas) sponsor home education "virtual" charter schools and/or reimburse parents who purchase curricula approved by the state.

In the United States, reasons for homeschooling vary; religious concerns are an important, though not overwhelming, factor. According to a U.S. Census survey, the parents of 33% of home-schoolers cited religion as a factor in their choice, 30% felt the regular school had a poor learning environment, 14% objected to what the school teaches, 11% felt their children weren't being challenged at school, and 9% cited "morality."

Options which make homeschooling attractive to some families also include:

• Allowing a longer exploratory play-oriented childhood, encouraging the development of rich imagination and pre-academic skills which can foster later academic success
• Allowing the child to learn faster The flexibility of the education schedule allows each student to work at his own pace, enjoy family vacations, and integrate outside activities or current events with subjects they are studying.
• Religion, ethics, and character topics not included in public school curriculums can be freely taught.
• Non-traditional curriculums and unusual subjects such as Latin and Greek can be taught.
• Geography, art and music curriculum can be enhanced
• Money management and business topics may be taught and integrated with a family business.

Homeschooling may have a financial impact on families. In addition to having to purchase school supplies and curriculum materials, a homeschooler’s parent(s) often cut back or refrain from employment outside the home in order to supervise the child’s education. This may have long-term career consequences as well. However, many homeschooling parents say that one unique benefit is the additional time they get to spend with their children.

In the U.S., homeschooling is generally legal, although in some states homeschool parents are occasionally threatened with prosecution under truancy laws. The U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on homeschooling specifically, but in Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972)[9] it supported the rights of Amish parents to keep their children out of public schools for religious reasons.

Every state has some form of a compulsory attendance law that requires children in a certain age range to spend a specific amount of time being educated. The most common way for parents to meet these requirements is to have their children attend public school. However, since its 1925 ruling in Pierce vs. Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, 268 U.S. 510 (1925)[10], the US Supreme Court has held that there can be no presumption on the part of the state that this attendance requirement must be met through public schooling. Initially the impact of this ruling was to protect the rights of families to privately educate their children, particularly in parochial schools. But, since the 1970s, increasing numbers of families have opted to meet these legal attendance requirements through homeschooling.

In California, for example, homeschoolers must either (a) be part of a public homeschooling program through independent study or a charter school, (b) use a credentialed tutor, or (c) enroll their children in a qualified private school. (Such private schools may be formed by the parents in their own home, or parents may utilize a number of private schools which offer some kind of independent study or distance learning options.) All persons who operate private schools in California, including parents forming schools just for their own children, must file an annual affidavit with the Department of Education. They must offer certain courses of study (generally similar to the content required in public schools, but described in one page rather than the hundreds of pages of scope and sequence requirements that public schools must follow) and must keep attendance records, but are otherwise not subject to any state oversight. There is no requirement in California that any private school teachers, whether the school is large or small, must have state credentials, although all teachers must be "capable of teaching."

States also differ in their requirements regarding testing and assessment. In some states, homeschoolers are required either to have their children take specified standardized tests or to have a narrative evaluation done by qualified teachers. Other states require no particular assessment. Again, using California as an example, students enrolled in a public program are encouraged to take the same year-end standardized tests that all public school students take, but students using tutors or enrolled in any private school, homeschool or not, are not required by the state to take any tests.

There are also differences between the states in graduating children from homeschools. In states in which homeschools must be or can be operated as any other private school, graduation requirements for all private schools in that state generally also apply to the homeschools. Some state education laws have no graduation requirements for private schools, leaving it up to the private schools to determine which students have met the graduation requirements, and thusly allowing homeschoolers the same privilege. And in yet other states, homeschoolers receive no official recognition that is equivalent to graduation. Independent homeschoolers in Florida, for example, cannot truthfully claim to have "graduated", even after completing twelve years of homeschooling. (However, Florida does grant such students equal access to the state's system of community colleges and universities.)

What curriculum materials homeschoolers are required to use varies from state to state. As stated before, in some states, homeschoolers are required to have their yearly lesson plans approved by a state official. Other states just require that certain subjects be covered, with the family to acquire or design the curriculum themselves. While many complete curricula are available from a wide variety of secular and religious sources, many families choose to use a variety of resources to cover the required subjects. There is at least one company offering a home-school curriculum which has also formed "virtual schools" under several states' charter school laws; in these schools, students are required to use that company's curriculum, although it is provided for free.

Some states have statutes that specifically require that homeschooled students be given access to district resources, such as school libraries or computer labs. In some communities, homeschoolers meet with a teacher periodically for curriculum review and suggestions. Many other states, however, do not require that the public schools give this access to resources, although some districts choose to do so voluntarily.

Some homeschool resources:

• Homeschool Central
• The Homeschool Mom
• CT Homeschool Network
• Teaching Mom

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