Gross and Fine motor skilss (Early and Middle childhood)

Gross motor skills

Children develop their gross motor skills during early childhood. When children move more their legs and they want to be sitted, they are begining to move more. Gross motor skills means that they are able to make movements with their legs, such as walking. Also, they move their arms to get what they want. Between three  and four years, young children can:

Pedals tricycle or bicycle at least three meters

 Catches large ball

Hops three hops with both feet

Jumps to floor from 12 inches

As they get older, they can easily do major or complex activities with the help of their body. At 4 years of age children are adventurous. They like to make the same activities but this time they go beyond, they can can down stairs with one foot on each step. They begin to include both feet but they alter them. At 5 years of age, they are more active and like to make races with their peers. I have to include in here that they are more competitive. My boyfriend's cousins used to make races, they were four boys, so imagine them running all the time. Rey was the younger one, he was four and half and he was always left behind the rest of his cousins, so he used to say: "Mom! (crying) I want to win this time!!! It is not fair, they always run faster than me and I don't want them to win, I want to win, just me! ". The whole family laughed when they remember this funny moment!

Middle children can do more activities, and among them we can observe the following activities:

Kicks rolling ball

 Rides bike with training wheels

Races become something fun among peers or their parents

Roller Skates

Skips rope

Now, talking about salvadorian children, I would like to mention that most of the children I met they only do the bike, the skips rope, the kicking ball, though we tend to play more the salvadorian games that we know or made up when we were between five or six. At that age, salvadorian children I have observed are energetic and mischivious. Well, I guess it is on our ADN. I used to play with my girls friends only, because I unconsciously avoided the boys' prescence. They were ignored and most of the time they used to act like the "gangsters and the cops", so those games did not caught my attention. I used play skiping the rope, hide and seek or with dolls.
So, as we have noticed, these activities mainly involved our gross motor skilss. So, let's move on to the next topic.

FINE MOTOR SKILLS

These motor skills deal with the small movements of the body, such as in the hands, fingers, toes, lips and tongue.  These motor skills that children develop become very important for every day activities. These skills allow children to tie their shoes, use scissors, open and close things, pinch objects, and many more functional tasks! Now I see the point on using and develop fine motor skills! If teachers promote fine motor skilss, children not only will have fun in the activities, but they are are going to be able to help develop their fine motor skills, which will allow them to do many tasks in the future that serve important functions to their daily lives. We  could have the children use different objects and tools to paint with and use for other crafts. Tools such as sponges, droppers, brushes, and cotton balls are among the many we use for our activities. Using these different tools require different hand movements that are precise that not only will allow them to do these activities, but it helps develop their fine motor skills, which will allow them to do many tasks in the future that serve important functions to their daily lives.

 "At three years of age, children show a more mature ability to place and handle things than when they were infants. They can build block tower, each block placed with great concentration but they fail placing them in straight line" (Physical development in Early Childhood, p. 260) It is important to monitor their develpment, so they one can evaluate their accuracy according to their age. 



At four years of age, this skill is more advanced and they can actually do their tasks more precise. They can build block towers more coordinated and sofisticated. They also get mad at themselves because they want it to be perfect, but it is part of their learning this skill. Then, by age five, children's fine motor coordination has improved fantasticaly. 

They enjoy playing dough at home. As a teacher we can implement it as a way of a tool. You can hide items in the dough and let them find it. They are manipulating dough in the way they want and they are also practising their fine motor skills! 

A five years olds girl, can easily insert the thread into the object. This requires that her hand, arm and eyes coordinate to make it happen. 

PICTORIAL STAGE

Also, drawings are showing us if the fine motor skill is developing correctly. I did not know that the infant can scribble at age 2 and by the time, they correlatinate scribbles to what they see about the world they live, so if you tell a two year old boy: Draw your sister, mother, father, the dog, the infant will just draw a scribble. However, this is not a bad outcome. At that age, they are expected to do it and then they acquire other stages of drawings. Scribbles include vertical, horizontal, diagonal, circular, curving, waving or zigzag lines and dots. Then as they progess from scribbling to picture making they go through four stages: Placement, shape, design and pictorial. Those stages were discovered by Rhonda Kellogg. 

The stages of Young Children's Artistic Drawings

Age 4 to 5 Pictorial stage

It is so important that teachers notice or observes that gross and fine motor skills are a child's tools so that he or she can actually develop more complex activities. Also, we have to promote this two skills in classroon and let the child be and do what they desire to show us with their drawings.

See you! :)