Developing Your Child's Motor Skills

Early childhood is a very physical time. Preschoolers devote much of their days to these kinds of actions for a simple reason: they must practice using their arms, legs, hands, and fingers. Scientists and educators refer to the process by which children slowly gain control over their bodies as motor development. They generally divide motor skills into two broad categories. Large motor skills involve muscle activities such as walking or moving one's arms. Fine motor skills require the use of smaller muscles and involve more precise moments, such as using the fingers to draw.

Good motor skills are important to your child's physical fitness and ability to conduct everyday activities like brushing her teeth, or getting the cereal from her bowl to her mouth. Motor skills are also a major factor affecting a child's early intellectual development. Activities that build good physical skills are intimately connected with a child's intellectual development. The better a young child's motor skills, the more she can explore. The more she can explore, the more she can learn. Also, motor skills assist in a child's social and emotional development. Competent motor skills give young children a greater sense of being in control and able to do things for themselves.

This helps to build confidence and independence. It also enables children to take part in social interactions (like playing patty-cake with big brother. Simply put, good motor skills bring great happiness to small children. Another major factor that is affected by a child's more skills is success in school. When your child gets to school, her teachers will expect her to be able to do certain basic things, such as hang up her coat, and carry things without dropping them. Many group activities will involve various motor skills, from joining hands and dancing in a circle to finger painting, cutting, and pasting. Finally, writing is a factor that is developed through a child's motor skills. This critical academic activity requires a lot of fine motor skill. No one expects your child to be able to write nearly when she reaches school, but if she does not have the skills that enable her to hold and manipulate a crayon or pencil; she will have difficulty learning to print letters and numbers.

Generally speaking, two things must happen for a child to acquire good motor skills. First, she must do lots of physical growing. Her muscular, skeletal, and nervous systems must all develop and strengthen. Second, she must gain coordination. She must learn to orchestrate the movements of her muscles to achieve desired results. She must also learn to gauge distances and direct her hand movements under the guidance of her eyes. This is a matter of practice-lots if it. One big reason children enjoy scribbling, coloring, building with blocks, taking things apart and putting them back together is that such games turn clumsy hands in to deft fingers.

Nature seems to have programmed little kids to enjoy doing things that help them develop. Even babies do a seemingly endless amount of reaching, grabbing, fingering, and dropping of objects in order to exercise the body and develop coordination. During the toddler and preschool years, children spend a great deal of time catching and throwing balls, hopping up and down, pushing and pulling wagons-all activities that aid in motor development.

The process of gaining motor skills by not means flows at any even pace. It is common for a young child to make rapid advances in a particular ability, suddenly stall for several weeks, or even seem to regress in a particular ability, then just a suddenly zoom ahead again. Further more, different children gain control over their bodies at a slightly different speeds. For example, it is normal for one child to begin walking at fourteen months when his older sisters took her first step at age one. In any group of preschoolers, some kids will be a bit further along than others at throwing and catching, jumping rope, drawing, and such.

Since they naturally spend so much time using their arms and legs and hands, children do not need any special classes or exercise to help them develop competent motor skills. So long as they have proper nourishment, adequate health care, plenty of physical activity, opportunities to play, and encouragement from adults, most do just fine in learning to control their bodies.

The key thing to remember is that early childhood should an active time. That means less time in front of the TV, and lots of playing and exploring the world. Physical activity in the preschool years helps your child grow up happy and strong, and is an important part of getting ready for school.
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