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Thanks for the encouragement and peace of mind. I hadn't really thought of it, but to tell the truth, I could never hold a pencil right either (and write legibly I mean)--still can't--and yet somehow I made it through college. lol. Good to keep that in perspective I guess!

There are a couple of books I found with my "pencil allergic" child, which were very helpful. I got them because she had trouble with a lot of sensory integration issues (loud noises, little awareness of where she was in space, etc), but there is a lot in them which is useful for helping with fine motor skills, too. They are The Out of Sync Child and The Out of Sync Child Has Fun, both by Carol Stock Kranowitz. Your library may well have at least one of them, so you can look through them.

A lot of the fine motor development an OT does is just playing with the fingers, so anything that uses fingers can be helpful: Hide pennies in "Thinking Putty" (this has a better texture than Play Doh and a bigger quantity in a container than Silly Putty), games with marbles or beans, using big tweezers or kid chop sticks (the kind that hook together at one end) to move cotton balls or those little round toys with prickly bumps on them from one place to another, using an ear suction bulb to blow a feather across the table and maybe even play "soccer" with this, playing Perfection, where you have to grab and turn little puzzle pieces into a board..... Anything you can think of that moves the fingers is good for this.

Also, much of the strength in the fingers actually comes from the forearms, so strengthening these can also be helpful. It can be fun to lay on a ball and roll out so your weight is on your hands, and then watch a short TV segment or try to do a puzzle (that's a bit tricky, so pick a really simple puzzle). The books I mentioned have quite a few ideas like this in the back.

We did also use occupational therapy for a year. It was well worth it for us.

Thanks for sharing...I've heard of those books but never read them (my little guy is also highly sensitive to sounds). I'll check them out! Great ideas too!