Parenting Help: School Readiness | Enhancing Physical Skills (Fine and Gross Motor Skills)

In this third part of the series on School Readiness we discuss some practical day-to-day ideas, activities and games to enhance Physical Skills

Physical skills are primarily divided into gross motor and fine motor skills. These skills require cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, speed, coordination, balance and accuracy hence, they develop over a period of time with practice.
Gross motor skills involve movement of the larger muscle groups, like the arms and legs. Which are required for large movements like crawling, running, jumping, throwing, climbing, swimming etc.
Fine motor skills involve movement of the smaller muscle groups in your child's hands, fingers, and wrists which are required for writing, holding small items, buttoning clothes, turning pages, eating, cutting with scissors, using computer keyboards etc.

Some of the gross motor skills your pre-schooler should work on are
• Running (with good stamina)
• Hoping (on both feet and one foot)
• Jumping
• Pedaling and steering a tricycle
• Climbing stairs
• Throwing, catching a big ball and bouncing it too

Park or public garden is one of the best places for development of gross motor skills. Kids can go sliding, swinging, climbing on the climbers, hanging on monkey bars, playing on the sea-saw. It’s fun and beneficial at the same time.
Outdoor games like throw ball, hopscotch, run ‘n’ catch etc. are great ways to not only enhance your kids gross motor skills but also teach them that even games have rules. Another fun activity is dancing, be it classical or hip-hop or just imitation of some dance moves from a show. It does improve presence of mind, sequential memory, balance and coordination.

Now for fine motor coordination your pre-schooler needs to be able to do some
• Picking and sorting of small objects
• Buttoning and Zipping clothes
• Lacing
• Holding and using pencil or crayons correctly
• Solving simple puzzles
• Stacking pyramids and blocks
• Stringing beads
• Using safety scissors
• Using glue stick for pasting

There are numerous activities and games for facilitating fine motor coordination and development.
At home you could introduce your child to play-dough or edible dough, lacing, beading, paper tearing, paper crumpling, paper cutting, picture sticking, drawing, colouring, tracing, join the dots, origami etc.
Encourage games where your child needs to do a lot of pulling and pushing such as tug-of-war to strengthen the fine motor muscles. Involve your child in giving you a helping hand in the kitchen. Kneading dough, peeling vegetables using a peeler, rolling rotis or puries, churning, steering and anything you think is safe is great.
Use action rhymes, action songs, like open them shut them, where is thumb-kin, clap your hands, head-shoulders-knees and toes, bingo etc. to add a little rhythm to the training.
Parents generally get a bit worried if the left hand is more dominantly used by their child. It is not advisable to change their dominant hand. All you got to do is make a few minor changes to suit the left-handed like the paper orientation when drawing or writing should be slightly tilted towards the right, while for right handed the paper is tilted towards the left.
Another important aspect to work on as soon as you introduce your child to a pencil or crayon is the grip and the grasping position. Traditionally the tripod grip where the thumb, index and middle fingers are holding the pencil beyond the shaved portion is considered to be the correct pencil grasp. This positioning of the fingers facilitates the finger movements and enable the writer to see what he or she is writing.
Help your child to start right and practice. Let it become a habit.

A quick recap

• Physical skills are primarily divided into Gross Motor and Fine Motor Skills
• To boost Gross Motor skills, we need to focus on activities involving arms and legs
• To enhance Fine motor skills, we need to focus on activities using hands - fingers, and wrists

Hope you are all set!

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[tennyparakka]

Good help for young parents in their parenting efforts. Congratulations

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