Early Childhood: Motor Development

Motor Skills

  • Motor skills do not develop in isolation.
  • The skills that emerge in early childhood build on the achievements of infancy and toddlerhood.
  • Motor coordination in childhood tends to be a relatively stable trait over time.
  • Motor coordination has also been associated with both childhood and adolescent levels of physical activity.

Gross Motor Development

  • As children’s bodies become less top-heavy, their center of gravity shifts downward:
      * Improves balance
      * Paves the way for new motor skills
  • Upper- and lower-body skills combine into more refined actions
  • Changes in ball-throwing and catching skills illustrate preschoolers’ gross-motor progress
  • Three-year-olds have the highest activity level of any age in the life span.
  • Preschoolers motor capabilities greatly advance, more coordinated, integrated
      * At age 3, enjoy simple movements such as hopping, jumping, and running back and forth.
      * At age 4, become more adventurous and begin climbing down as well as up.
      * At age 5, runs hard, more adventurous, may try ‘daredevil’ stunts

Fine Motor Skills

  • Fine motor skills are also developing.
  • At age 3, children show a more mature ability to place and handle things than they did as infants.
  • At age 4, coordination is improved and more precise.
  • At age 5, hand, arm, and body all move together under better command of the eye; and the child seeks more complex activities.
  • Fine-motor skills take a giant leap forward in the preschool years
  • Self-help skills:
      * At age 3, children show a more mature ability to place and handle things than they did as infants.
      * By age 4 to 5, dress and undress without supervision
      * By age 4, adept with a fork; by age 5, can use a knife to cut soft foods
  • Drawing:
      * Scribbles begin during the second year
      * First representational forms appear around age 3
      * More realistic drawings are done at ages 5 and 6
      * Drawing skills vary across cultures

Implications

  • Poor motor coordination has been associated with an increased risk of obesity or overweight in children in what is likely to be a reciprocal relationship.
  • Gains in fine motor skills allow young children to take more responsibility.
      * Helps with attention and concentration , creative problem solving
  • Movement gets the brain going. An active body makes for an active brain
  • Parents and teachers can help by:
      * Make learning an active affair - opportunities for movement activities
      * Providing safe equipment to jump and climb
      * Offering gentle coaching and encouragement