This chapter profiles the extraordinary motor advancements that occur during the preschool years.

1. Introduction

1. An important area in children's development is movement.
2. Individual children move through the world differently.
3. Some are very active, others prefer quiet solitude and reflection
4. Some children explore objects by acting on them; they must throw, swing, bang, or bend them to fully understand their properties
5. Movement styles and preferences, activity levels, and motor abilities vary across cultures
6. Physical activity also differs by age; younger children have a harder time sitting still for long periods

1. Physical growth

1. Children of all cultures grow physically in certain similar ways during the preschool years
2. The preschool years are a time of slow but steady increase in height, weight, and muscle tone
3. Preschoolers' bodies grow faster than their heads
4. A pronounced physical change that occurs during the preschool years is arm and leg growth
5. These growth patterns lead to a shift in the center of gravity, the point at which body weight is evenly distributed
6. Babies' centers of gravity are high in the body, somewhere in the area of the chest
7. A preschoolers' center of gravity is nearer the belly button
8. Physical changes in the preschool years are also evident in weight increases: at typical preschooler weighs 31% more at the end of this period than at its beginning
9. Preschoolers' height and weight vary significantly
10. A study of children within the US showed that among 4- and 5-year-olds ranged from under 90 centimeters to over 115 centimeters
11. The weight of these same children was even more variable with a range of 30 to 50 pounds

1. Gross motor development

1. Gross motor abilities are skills that require the use of large muscles in the legs or arms, as well as general strength and stamina
2. Examples of such skills include running, jumping, throwing, climbing, and kicking
3. Advancements in these areas often appears to be so rapid that adults come to believe these abilities are acquired overnight
4. Motor development is characterized by a gradual refinement in abilities
5. Locomotion skills, such as walking and running, progress in the same way
6. There are two distinct kinds of movement abilities: movement consistency and movement constancy
7. Movement consistency refers t basic movement skills such as running or catching
8. Movement constancy refers to an ability to adapt these movements to meet varying environmental challenges
9. Both are critical for play and everyday life in all cultures
10. Reaction time is also important in many childhood games
11. Traditional American pastimes such as musical chairs, "red light, green light," and slapjack require quick motoric reactions to stimuli
12. Cultural Variations in motor skills

1. Since physical growth is most often governed by genetics and maturation, preschoolers across cultures are more alike than they are different in motor development

1. Cultural Variations in Activity Level

1. Activity level generally increases during the first 2 years of life and then, for most children, decreases significantly through age 5
2. Boys have been found to be consistently more active than girls, suggesting that high activity level is a sex-linked genetic trait
3. Children's need for movement varies by culture

1. Motor Play and Culture

1. Preschoolers of different cultures use motor abilities in different ways as they play
2. Running and Walking

1. Running and walking are observed in children of all cultures as they engage in free play
2. American preschools or child care centers afford many opportunities for varied walking experiences, including tiptoeing quietly to the bathroom, climbing up and down steps, and keeping up with older children on a field trip
3. It is impossible to keep children form running
4. Open-ended chasing is a common running game played on American preschool playgrounds
5. Running consistency means a basic running skill
6. Running constancy is varying running movements to meet all kinds of circumstances and in response to the actions of peers
7. Running games are also common in other cultures

1. Climbing and Jumping down

1. Climbing competence requires large motor development as well as a positive disposition toward taking risks
2. Once children have climbed up on something, they generally jump down.
3. Jumping is a complex action that develops gradually in stages
4. Young preschoolers step off from surfaces rather than jump down from them
5. Girls and boys differ in their jumping skill: girls are more precise in their umps, while boys can leap higher
6. Games involving climbing up and jumping down are common in any culture

1. Catching and Throwing

1. Balls predominate in children's play in Western societies
2. Children acquire throwing and catching abilities gradually
3. Only in the elementary years will they display highly coordinated ball-handling skills
4. In the early preschool years, children begin to throw overhanded
5. During the course of the preschool years, children's arms become more fluid and less rigid when they throw, and they are better able to time the release of objects
6. Eventually they begin to use their whole bodies, not just their arms
7. Near the en of the preschool years, some children learn to step forward with the foot opposite the throwing arm and to shift their weight to get behind a throw
8. Catching ability also progresses during the preschool years
9. Initially, children are rigid, passive targets They simply put out both arms and wait for the objects to strike them
10. If a thrown object happens to come directly between their arms, they may trap it against their chest to make the catch
11. Their reaction time is simply not quick enough to grab an object as it strikes them
12. Older preschoolers begin to catch more effectively
13. They become very competent at catching large objects by age 5, but still struggle with small balls or other catching toys
14. In other cultures, balls may not be available, but throwing still predominates in children's play

1. Balancing

1. When preschoolers grow taller, their center of gravity becomes lower and their balance improves
2. Balance is required for many games
3. Children often engage in play in which they deliberately cause themselves to become off-balance examples are spinning around and around and then trying to walk, or sliding down a particularly slippery slide then trying to regain balance at the bottom

1. Rough-and-Tumble Play

1. Children of all cultures engage in wild, silly roughhousing that looks, from outward appearances, like fighting or aggressive behavior
2. A growing body of research suggests that rough-and-tumble play, which includes wrestling, play-fighting, rolling around, or chasing peers-all accompanied by screams, laughter, and noise-making-is useful for motor development and social learning
3. Such play likely relieves tension, exercises many different muscle simultaneously, leads to close physical contact with peers, and is generally great fun
4. Rough-and-tumble play may be the ideal context for acquiring motor abilities in early childhood
5. Children who are less active might be enticed into activity by such open-ended, humor-filled interchanges
6. Children who do not care for organized games or who prefer make-believe activities might be attracted to the competition-free, highly symbolic features of rough-and-tumble play
7. Multicultural studies suggest children of all cultures engage in rough-and-tumble play

5. Fine Motor Development

1. The ability to coordinate smaller muscles in the arms, hands, and fingers is referred to as fine motor development
2. At this age children begin to use these smaller muscles to perform a variety of self-help skills
3. Although children may struggle a bit with self-help skills such as buttoning, zipping, or eating with utensils, these are mastered, for the most part, by age 4 or 5
4. Fine motor abilities are supported by advancements in perception
5. Preschoolers can see, hear, tough, taste, and smell as well as adults can
6. They are much better at interpreting what they perceive than they were during infancy
7. They scan visual stimuli much more completely than infants
8. They begin to coordinate these newly acquired perceptual abilities with body movements
9. This ability to integrate movements and perception has been called perceptual-motor coordination

5. Artistic Development

1. Children of all cultures engage in quiet games that involve the use of small muscles
2. The types of games vary according to the available toys and cultural traditions
3. Drawing and other forms of artistic expression are perhaps the most universal form of fine motor play
4. Drawing Development: A traditional view

1. Children's drawing illustrates fine motor development as well as intellectual growth in the preschool years
2. In toddlerhood and the early preschool years, children often scribble
3. Over time, these scribbles become more controlled, often containing more circular strokes and discrete shapes
4. Eventually, children name their scribbles or tell stories about them
5. Even in the early preschool years children exhibit an awareness that art can be sued to symbolically represent the real world
6. In the later preschool years, children often begin to create simple representations of the people and things that are important to them
7. Heads predominate in their drawings during this period
8. As children progress, they draw stick arms and legs which at first protrude from the heads of their figures and later are attached to bodies drawn below the heads
9. In the elementary years, elaborate scenes are created which reflect a greater degree of correspondence to the real world
10. An interesting feature of children's drawing is repetitive practice
11. Once children begin making small, circular scribbles, they draw these over and over again on paper
12. Once they begin to draw heads, they fill pages with them
13. This repetitive practice may be an effort to gain master over newly acquired abilities
14. Drawing development involves a complex coordination of perceptual, motor, and cognitive skills

1. Drawing Development: The Reggio Emilia Perspective

1. An excellent example of how culture influences artistic development can be found in Reggio Emilia
2. Preschoolers as young as age 3 have been observed creating highly representational works of art
3. Characteristics of Reggio Emilia classrooms for children through age 6 include:

1. art is used as a representation of learning
2. art and all other learning experiences are collaborative
3. time and space are devoted to artistic representation
4. a teacher who is trained in the visual arts is available in each school
5. learning experiences are displayed in the classroom using documentation panels

5. Gender and Motor Development

1. Researchers have observed gender differences in motor development during the preschool years
2. Boys have been found to lose baby fat and acquire muscle tone more quickly than girls
3. Girls are more competent at fine motor activities
4. This may be because some areas of the brain-those responsible for perceptual-motor abilities-are more fully developed in females during this period
5. Boys are generally found to be more active; they engage in more rough-and-tumble play than girls

5. Personal and Family Life Skills

1. Advances in motor development allow preschoolers to take better care of themselves and to take on simple household responsibilities

5. Physically Challenging Conditions

1. Neurological and Perceptual Disorders

1. Cerebral palsy, a disorder that can be caused by oxygen deprivation before or during birth, affects motor coordination and muscle strength
2. Down syndrome can cause delays in gross motor abilities, fine motor abilities, and language abilities in preschoolers
3. Some preschoolers show general motor delay that has no specified cause
4. In some cases, this is accompanied by delays in language or cognition
5. This condition may be due to minimal brain damage, perhaps occurring in fetal development or during the birth process, which is imperceptible to physicians in neonatal tests
6. Visual and hearing impairment soften affect motor ability

1. Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

1. one motor-related condition which is occasionally identified within the preschool years is attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
2. Debate about what causes this disorder is ongoing; most researchers believe that minimal brain dysfunction is the source of the problem
3. There are no simple solutions

1. Malnutrition

1. Malnutrition can have a devastating effect on motor development in the preschool years
2. Protein energy malnutrition affects approximately half of the world's children
3. Limited growth and poor skeletal formation have been found in those suffering from this condition
4. Children who are extremely malnourished in the early years may never reach their full developmental potential

1. Early Intervention

1. Generally, the motor development of young children with special needs is greatly enhanced by early intervention programs that provide classroom or home-based education and parent support