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