sorry, I made a mistake in minute 0.50: What I am showing is an extension.

In these lessons, you will already use what you learned in the previous lessons in a little more specific manner. Take your time with it - and enjoy applying your knowledge.

Remember

• Start with what you already know to "wake up" arms and shoulders
• When doing the rotation, don`t hold the hand and turn from there. go a bit lower with your hand and turn from the ulna and radius, or just grab below the wrist - we will get there in detail.
• Look for easy movements. Those are the experiences we eventually want to teach the child.
• Take little breaks now and then, and just touch the hands lightly. What we are looking for are independent movements of the child.
• The first independent movements are tiny. We want to see the brain connection to the hand in various ways, rather than big specialized movements like grabbing a toy. This comes later.
• Playing with the hands can be very interactive. Let the child touch your face, pulls your hair, let them put their fingers in your mouth. This encourages relationship and talking.

Here is another way to work with the hands. Using cream or paint will intensify the experience.

Remember

• you can do this lesson in any position. Lying down is not a bad idea if you try it for the first time, as it is a relaxed position - if your child is willing to do it.
• Move the hand up and down. This will also open the fingers.
• If you cannot open the fingers, try holding the whole fist for a time, then again moving the hand up and down.
• Bring the index finger and thumb together.
• We are trying to get a connection to the brain here, not a specific hand movement. Make the child feel its fingers by tapping them together, then gliding around the whole length of the finger, wherever you can reach.
• Do this for about one minute with every finger.
• Lift and bend the hand again as we did in the beginning - see if the child`s fingers are opening a bit easier.
• Have the child sit and touch his/ her toes as well, going in-between the toes and gently pulling them apart.
• Interlace the fingers - this does not have to be perfect, as long as fingers are sticking in-between other fingers.
• Interlace fingers and toes.
  

Anatomy

The human hand is made up of the wrist, palm, and fingers and consists of 27 bones, 27 joints, 34 muscles, over 100 ligaments, and tendons, and many blood vessels and nerves.

We do not need to know the names of single bones and joints - but maybe you would like to see some of the muscle groups and structures of the hand. In minute 3.50 you can see how far up these muscles are reaching.

Training 34 muscles one by one would be very hard and need a very specific approach if it could be done at all with children. It is actually much easier to get back to the way a child learns to gain control of its hand - via sensation, movement, and experience.