THE EFFECT OF PLAY THERAPY FINGER PAINTING ON FINE MOTOR SKILLS IN MENTALLY RETARDED CHILDREN AT SLB WELAS ASIH MAJA DISTRIC

Mentally retarded children are individuals with below-average intelligence levels
accompanied by limitations in behavioral adjustments, including in fine motor
development. Fine motor is an important aspect of child development that includes
coordination of small muscle movements such as fingers and wrists. This study aims to
determine the effect of play therapy using the Finger Painting method on improving fine
motor skills in mentally retarded children.
This study uses a quantitative approach method with the type of Quasi-experiment method

with a one group pretest postest research design. The population in this study was class I-
IV SLB Welas Asih Maja District which amounted to 20 people and sampling using

purposive sampling technique. The instrument used is a fine motor observation sheet and
data analysis using the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test.
The results of univariate analysis before the play therapy finger painting fine motor
category were 12 respondents (60%) and good fine motor 6 respondents (30%). While the
results of the analysis after the provision of finger painting play therapy, namely the fine
motor category less 3 respondents (15%) and fine motor good 13% (65%). The results of
bivariate analysis show that the significant value of 0.000 is smaller than 0.05 (0.000
<0.05), so Ho is rejected and Ha is accepted. This means that there is a significant influence
between play therapy finger painting on fine motor skills in children with disabilities.