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A lot has been written about the relationship between the hand and the brain implying that the strenght of the brain is positively correlated to the strength of hand control. In the classroom, we have a plethora of activities that are designed to improve the eye-hand control movement and the strength of the hand. Most of the children who enter are rudimentary in these skill areas. Furthermore, when we sing the finger play song about the fingers, most cannot isolate the individual fingers. In fact, at the beginning of the year, they seem shocked that the fingers are actually able to move separately. For my current setting, in which I only have most children for one year, I see a clear development, at the the end of the year, in their ability to isolate the individual fingers as we sing the fingerplay song. By that time, most don't even remember how hard they had to work to see that the fingers were individual digits and then try to raise each finger at the appropriate time. These same children show a clear development in their ability to self-regulate behaviors, in a variety of settings, and in their pincer grasps and eye-hand control. Furthermore, their gross motors skills are refined and executed with more finesse. The question I am leading up to is whether the strengthening of hand-eye movement and hand strength is correlated to the strengthening of the I-function. If so, what are the implications for education? A friend once described the PT she received for brain damage, due to high velocity impact, and those exercises could easily have been the same as the ones I put in my classroom for the development of hand strength and hand-eye coordination.   

This issue also shows the role of awareness in mastery.