✏️ Motor Skills Observation Checklist
Clumsy, always falling, cannot hold a pencil, still cannot manage buttons. Record it across both big movements and small ones, and the pattern tells you far more than any single worry.
How to use it at home
- Print one sheet and fill it in over a fortnight of ordinary days — getting dressed, playing outside, school work.
- Cover both halves. Gross motor is the big stuff: running, stairs, balance, catching. Fine motor is the small stuff: pencils, buttons, cutlery, scissors.
- Compare against what your child’s friends and siblings managed at the same age rather than against an ideal.
- Note whether your child avoids an activity as well as whether they struggle with it. Avoidance is often the first sign.
- Bring it to your appointment, and bring a page of your child’s handwriting or drawing if writing is the concern.
A quick preview — here’s what you’ll print:
Tick what you see over about two weeks, and note your child’s age beside anything that concerns you. This is an observation record, not a standardised assessment.
| Big movements — balance and coordination | Often | Sometimes | Not yet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trips, stumbles or bumps into things more than other children their age | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Struggles with stairs, or still leads with the same foot every time | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Finds catching, throwing or kicking a ball difficult | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Tires quickly during running and active play | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Avoids climbing frames, PE or outdoor games | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Small movements — hands and fingers | Often | Sometimes | Not yet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Holds a pencil awkwardly, or in a fist beyond the early years | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Presses very hard, or so lightly the marks barely show | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Finds scissors difficult to control | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Struggles to thread, build or fit small pieces together | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Handwriting is slow, effortful or hard to read | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Getting dressed and self-care | Often | Sometimes | Not yet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Needs help with buttons, zips or laces beyond the usual age | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Puts clothes on back to front or inside out | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Finds cutlery difficult; spills often at mealtimes | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Struggles with teeth brushing or washing without help | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Planning and sequencing a task | Often | Sometimes | Not yet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starts a task confidently but comes unstuck partway through | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Finds multi-step activities hard to organise | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Learns a new physical skill much more slowly than expected | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Does better with one instruction at a time than a whole sequence | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| How your child feels about it | Often | Sometimes | Not yet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Says they are “bad at” drawing, writing or sport | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Avoids activities they used to enjoy | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
| Gets frustrated or upset during physical or writing tasks | ☐ | ☐ | ☐ |
- Print one sheet and fill it in over a fortnight of ordinary days — getting dressed, playing outside, school work.
- Cover both halves. Gross motor is the big stuff: running, stairs, balance, catching. Fine motor is the small stuff: pencils, buttons, cutlery, scissors.
- Compare against what your child’s friends and siblings managed at the same age rather than against an ideal.
- Note whether your child avoids an activity as well as whether they struggle with it. Avoidance is often the first sign.
- Bring it to your appointment, and bring a page of your child’s handwriting or drawing if writing is the concern.
Pairs with our free fine motor home program at inclusivetherapycentre.com/home-programs
Why this helps
Motor difficulty gets dismissed more often than almost anything else we see. A child who trips over nothing, cannot catch, holds a pencil in a fist at seven and still needs help with buttons is called clumsy, lazy or careless — and then quietly starts avoiding the playground, the drawing table and PE. By the time a family asks for help, the original difficulty has usually collected a second problem on top of it: a child who has decided they are bad at things. Writing down what you actually see is how you separate a skill difficulty from a confidence one, and it is much easier to act on the first when you catch it early.
Splitting the sheet into big movements and small ones matters, because the two do not always travel together. Some children are steady on their feet but cannot manage a pencil; others are the reverse. A child who struggles across both, and has done since they were small, is a different picture from one who is fine everywhere except handwriting. Our page on dyspraxia and developmental coordination disorder sets out what that broader pattern looks like, while dysgraphia covers the writing-specific version, and gross motor vs fine motor skills explains the difference in plain terms if the labels are new to you.
It is worth being clear about what this sheet is not. It is not a standardised assessment and there is no score. When coordination is assessed properly, clinicians use validated tools — you may hear of the Movement ABC or the DCDQ — which are scored against large comparison groups, alongside a developmental history and direct observation. International guidance is also cautious about diagnosing coordination difficulties below about five years of age, and recommends looking at a child on more than one occasion several months apart, precisely because young children develop unevenly. A fortnight of your notes feeds into that process; it does not shortcut it.
We should also say plainly what we can and cannot offer. We do not employ a licensed occupational therapist. What our special education and ABA team provides is practical, structured skill-building — pencil control, dressing, cutlery, self-care routines — described on our motor, handwriting and daily-living skills page. Where a child needs assessment or treatment by a qualified OT or physiotherapist, we will say so and help you find one rather than keeping your child on our books.
For practical work at home, the strongest evidence in paediatric occupational therapy is for task-specific practice — that is, practising the actual skill you want, rather than general exercises meant to improve coordination in the abstract. So if handwriting is the goal, practise handwriting. Our free fine motor home program and gross motor home program are built that way, and handwriting help for kids has quick wins you can start tonight. The letter tracing sheets pair naturally with the writing section of this checklist.
Tips for using it well
- Do note your child’s age against each difficulty. “Cannot do up buttons” means something very different at four than at eight.
- Don’t add the ticks up. There is no cut-off, and coordination is assessed with standardised tools, not printable ones.
- Do watch a whole task from start to finish before ticking. Many children manage the first step and come unstuck at sequencing the rest, which is a distinctive and useful observation.
- Do record avoidance — the child who always needs the toilet at PE, or who draws only tiny pictures in a corner of the page.
- Don’t practise for long stretches. Short, frequent, task-specific practice beats a weekly marathon, and it keeps a discouraged child on side.
- Do check whether your child can see the board and the page properly. Uncorrected vision imitates a coordination difficulty surprisingly well.
- Do bring a sample of handwriting or drawing to the appointment — it says things a tick box cannot.
Common questions
My child is clumsy. Is that dyspraxia?
It might be, and it might not. Plenty of children go through clumsy patches, especially during growth spurts, and coordination varies enormously between children of the same age. What points towards a coordination difficulty is the combination: it has been there since your child was small, it affects everyday tasks rather than only sport, it shows up in more than one setting, and it is holding your child back at school or socially. That is precisely the pattern this sheet is designed to capture. Our dyspraxia and DCD page goes through it properly.
At what age should I be worried about pencil grip?
Grip matures gradually, and a young child holding a crayon in a fist is doing exactly what a young child does. Most children have settled into a functional grip somewhere around five to six, though there is normal variation and there is more than one perfectly good grip. The thing worth acting on is not the shape of the grip itself but its consequences — a child who tires quickly, writes painfully slowly, presses so hard the paper tears, or avoids writing altogether. Write down the consequence rather than the grip.
Should we do exercises to improve coordination generally?
The evidence points the other way, and it is worth knowing before you spend months on something. Reviews of paediatric occupational therapy find good support for task-specific practice — practising the actual skill you want to improve — while general programmes intended to improve underlying coordination in the abstract have a much weaker evidence base. In practice that means practising doing up buttons if buttons are the problem, and practising letter formation if writing is. Our home programs are built on that principle.
Do you have an occupational therapist?
No, and we will not describe our work as occupational therapy. We do not employ a licensed OT. Our special education and ABA team coaches practical motor, handwriting and daily-living skills, which helps a great many children, and where a child needs a qualified occupational therapist or physiotherapist we say so and point you to one. You can read exactly what we do and do not offer on our motor and daily-living skills page.
Could this be something medical rather than developmental?
It can be, which is why we ask you to see a doctor alongside us if any of a few things are true: your child has lost skills they previously had, the difficulty came on suddenly, one side of the body is clearly weaker than the other, or there is pain, frequent falls or unusual stiffness or floppiness. Those need a medical opinion first, not a therapy plan. Please speak to your paediatrician promptly if any of that sounds familiar.
Written by the Inclusive Developmental and Therapy Center therapy team — our Speech & Language Therapist, psychology and ABA staff. This page is awaiting its clinical review.
Want help using these with your child?
A short, friendly conversation is the best first step. Call, text or WhatsApp us — we’ll listen and guide you, with no pressure.
MPS Road, Block A Model Town, Multan (near Bloomfield Hall School, Street No. 2) · Mon–Sat, 10 AM – 7 PM