Buttons for little fingers

For my job I am an OT Aide for the school district here. I LOVE what I do. I worked in Early Intervention for 2 years before I found this job and LOOOVED that one too. Little kids are just fun for me.

We do a lot of work with our kids that need help with handwriting, correct 3-finger grasp, fine motor skills, finger strength, isolated finger grasp blah blah blah (you guys don't care:) BASICALLY we need them to be able to lots of tiny little things with their fingers as a pre-cursor to writing. Our kids get tired of the same-old clothespins, pennies, thera-putty, pegboards. So we are always looking for new things to interest them and get them to use those 3 fingers. FOUND ONE!!! And using things I had laying around the house. Oh how I love that!

Materials:
Sticky backed velcro
scissors
buttons (shapes, sizes and colors up to you)
paint sticks (yep, the FREE paint stirrers from Home Depot and Lowes. I spray painted mine black before I got started.)
(Ignore the Gorilla Glue. I forgot the velcro was self-adhesive. That's how smart I am...)
I'm doing 4 button sticks. I thought "Why not mix in learning colors too?"
I wanted a couple more colors on my stick and since I'm making them I can do that:) Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, white. So I can say "Put the red one on" or "Pull off the yellow one."
I cut up strips of the sticky velcro and put them on the stick. I put the soft side on the back of the buttons and trimmed them to size. (upper right-hand corner)
VOILA! That easy. I did it in ONE (1) UNO Episode of ColorSplash ( I heart that show)
I can't wait for my kids to try this on Monday.