Parent Handout

www.familycenter-pirc.org

A program sponsored by The Family Center of Utah Valley

Gross and Fine Motor Development

Movement is very important for helping children grow healthy and strong. Gross motor development refers to skills involving the large muscles. When a young child has good control of her body, she feels confident to explore new ways to move, take risks, and try more complex activities. This competence and confidence allows her to enjoy interacting with other young children as they run, jump, hop, climb, and play tag together. Balance, strength, agility, and flexibility are needed to perform basic gross motor skills.

• Gross motor development has an impact on all other areas of development.

• Motor skills develop sequentially; you have to walk before you run, and you have to be able to hop as well as gallop before you are able to combine these two skills into complex skipping.

• The sequence in which motor skills are learned or acquired is always the same but the rate varies.

• Preschool children are learning the basic motor skills, such as walking, running, jumping, throwing, catching and kicking. All basic skills progress from initial (first) attempts to an elementary (practicing) phase to a mature (efficient) phase.

• Opportunity is the most important factor impacting the development of efficient motor skills. Children need to have opportunities to learn what their bodies can do and then practice to develop effective and efficient motor patterns. This does not mean you need to enroll your child in organized sports.

Preschoolers need the following to develop competent motor skills:

·         Opportunities to develop eye-hand coordination and tracking through large/gross motor activities.

·         Directions about how to perform a particular skill.

·         Ample and frequent practice of basic skills.

·         Games and activities for children to work together to improve their emerging social and cooperative abilities.

·         Physical fitness activities based upon success and improvement. Emphasis should be on regular (three times a week), vigorous, and prolonged activities that are fun, enjoyable, and can be done independently. The goal is not to create a super sports star or a toddler with abs of steel, but to encourage your child to have an active lifestyle and to enjoy lifelong fitness.

 Fun ways to encourage your youngsters to get moving.

·         Follow their movements.  Babies and toddlers love when you imitate them. It makes them feel important.

·         Put on different types of music and move to the beat with your young child in your arms.  Encourage your toddler to move to music on her own. Children this age often do not change their movements to match the music, they respond to their own internal rhythm.

·         Describe your child’s actions as she dances to the music. “Look how you bounce to the beat.” This not only helps her learn new words, but also instills a sense of pride that her actions are noticed!

·         Create an “obstacle course” that encourages your toddler to use a variety of skills. Have boxes set up for him to crawl through, pillows to climb on and blocks to run around. Doing the course over and over helps your child learn to organize his actions to reach a goal.

·         Songs like The Itsy Bitsy Spider can help develop the use of fingers and hands.

·         In the sandbox, offer your child different size pails and shovels to help her practice using her fingers and hands.

·         Play with balls of all sizes.  Figure out together which ones are best to kick, throw, play catch with and roll.

·         Act out stories using movement and dance. Good themes include animal stories, marching bands and fantasy images such as fairies and superheroes. 

·         Throw socks or bean bags into a bucket or box.

Fine motor development refers to skills involving the control of small, precise movements involving the hands, fingers, toes, mouth, lips, and tongue. Such movements are important for activities such as writing, using scissors, buttoning, zippering, tying shoes, and later keyboarding and playing a musical instrument. The skills involved in fine motor movements require a good deal of practice.

Ways to encourage fine motor development:

• Scribbling, drawing, and writing. Provide paper in different sizes and colors—spiral bound pads, notepaper, index cards, tablets, or cardboard. Children enjoy experimenting with different pencils, crayons, chalk, felt-tip markers, ballpoint pens, etc. Your child will find it easier to hold his pencil correctly when he is drawing on a vertical surface. You can encourage him by taping paper to the wall for him to draw on.

• Cutting. Use child size scissors. Many 3 year olds find it challenging to use scissors. At first they may only be able to open and close the scissors without cutting anything. They will then progress to making snips, then cutting along a straight line, then a curved line. Cutting playdough, stiff paper, plastic straws, or shredded paper gives children practice at using scissors.

• Painting with paint or water. Preschoolers may have difficulty controlling drips from a brush. It helps to put the paint into a can with a hole cut in the plastic lid just big enough for the brush to fit through. On a hot day, give your child a bucket of water and a paintbrush and have them paint the sidewalk outside.

• Stringing. Have your child string beads, Cheerios, macaroni, or anything with a hole in the center. String them onto a shoelace, yarn, or pipe cleaners. Older preschoolers are ready to handle lacing cards, which can be easily made by punching holes in used greeting cards, poster board, or old vinyl placemats.

• Fingerpainting. Use store bought varieties or make your own with pudding. The slippery texture invites the child to try different finger movements to make different designs.

• Touching and Squeezing textured items. Gather items such as fur, fabric swatches of various textures, leaves, sandpaper, seashells, rocks, sponges, and foam balls, etc.

• Exploring without looking. Place an item inside a tube sock. Let your child feel inside and try to guess what the item is. Use items of various textures such as cotton balls (soft), sandpaper (rough), rocks (hard), duck tape (sticky).

• Stacking and building with blocks of various sizes and shapes. Block play enhances muscle control, eye-hand coordination, and perceptual and sensory-motor development.

• Doing puzzles. Putting a puzzle piece in the correct place requires your child to rotate his hands.

• Using items that strengthen the small muscles in your child’s hands and fingers. Playing with tongs, turkey basters, spring-type clothespins, sponges, squeeze bottles, eyedroppers, and paper hole-punchers strengthen fine motor muscles. Playing with playdough involves squeezing, pulling, pinching, cutting. Opening and closing plastic lids on containers is another good activity.

• Sorting small objects. Picking up buttons, coins, yarn pieces, or beads from a tray of sand or salt is good fine motor practice. Have a treasure hunt or make a game of it!

• Playing finger games such as “Where is Thumbkin?”

 What activities does my child need so he can learn what his body can do? _________________________________________________________________________________________

What motor skills does my child need more practice with? ___________________________________________

Do I engage my child in physical activity every day? ________________________________________________

Do I provide my child with the materials needed to develop fine motor skills? _____________________________

www.zerotothree.org., and The Parents As Teachers National Center, Inc.