Childhood Physical Development Essay

Physical Development – This area is only split into two different aspects. The first one is ‘moving and handling’, this means that children must be able to show control and confidence in large and small movements. The second aspect is ‘health and self-care’, this means that children must know how important it is to stay healthy and do regular exercise.

Physical development in children is an important area and is usually expected to happen automatically as they grow. The important areas are gross motor skills,

Physical activity has not only physical benefits. It also has a very big impact on social-emotional and cognitive aspects of child’s live. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “The development of a physically active lifestyle is a goal for all children. Traditional team and competitive sports may promote healthy activity for selected youth. Individual sports, noncompetitive sports, lifetime sports, and recreational activities expand the opportunity for activity to everyone. The opportunity to be active on a regular basis, as well as the enjoyment and competence gained from activity, may increase the chances that a physically active lifestyle will be adopted.”

Physical activity encourages children and young people to develop all their physical skills and to practice the skills that they already have. Your role in supporting a child’s physical development will be to ensure that the child has a wide variety of experiences of being in a safe environment. Any setting should offer a wide range of equipment that can be used both indoors and out. It is considered important that children are given opportunities to develop their gross motor skills indoors as well as outdoors. Such opportunities may be provided by designated areas such as soft play area or by activities such as drama.

Physical activity is an integral part of health and well being in children.Our bodies also require physical activity in order to be healthy.Understanding and supporting physical activity, will help children have the right foundation for a healthy and happy life.Positive experiences with physical activity at a young age promotes the growth if strong bones and muscles, help to develop good posture and balance, obesity risk and chronic disease risk infection are reduced.

"Virtually everything a young child does is affected if physical development is delayed" (Charlesworth, 2000). Adults and teachers need to do everything possible to keep physical development from being delayed. Adults can provide children with opportunities to help them in development.

Physical activity also has benefits for children's social and emotional development and cognitive development. These benefits include being part of a team and making friends through group sports, which have a major impact on social and emotional development. The effect of obesity on children is closely linked to many bad health habits such as diet, smoking and drug use which in turn can affect a child's academic performance (Goran et al., 1999). Physical activity, if encouraged at a young age, can reduce the likelihood of children developing these behaviours and focus on their academic performance and cognitive development. As children in this age range are in their fundamental development stage, it is important that educators and parents alike, teach children about the importance of physical activity at a young age in order to prevent health and social well-being problems in their adult years.

Children develop in many ways including through physical activity, mental activity and interaction with others (Roode, 1). According to a January 2007 clinical

Children develop gross motor skills at different age norms which are affected by their culture and can vary (Berger, 2014). In order to gain information, we need to educate and understand this development, we have to conduct research. We are looking for new information and theories. Although surveys are a great way to collect a large amount of data the information gained is only as sound as the subject. This is why we need other avenues for research, and we need parental support to make that happen.

Alexander, Enrique, and Alexis are the names of the children I observed. They have different gross motor skills and fine motor skills. However, their differences are in the sophistication of each ability. Alexander, who is 7 years old is very active. He was jumping and trying to count by jumping on the tile floors to see how many there were across the living room. He is developing typically to his age. What has influenced this level of physical development is the amount of myelin in the brain increases and raises the speed at which electrical impulses travel between neuron. Which, makes massages reach muscles more rapidly and control them better. Enrique, in the other hand, his physical development is more sophisticated than Alexander’s.

The theorist whose theory is physical development is Arnold Gesell. His theory is that most physical skills cannot be taught but is programmed in our genetics, which means we will learn different physical skills when our body is ready to. In our setting, we support this by encouraging children but not forcing them to develop a physical skill. We have outdoor playtimes between 2-4 times a day so that children can develop themselves physically whilst having fun outside for example staff encourage our toddlers to run outside and

As children’s bodies become more streamlined and less top-heavy, their center of gravity shifts downwards toward the trunk. As a result, balance improves greatly, paving the way for new motor skills involving large muscles of the body. (Berk, 1999) During the preschool years until approximately age seven, fundamental motor skills develop including the locomotor skills needed to run, jump, hop, and skip. Also the object control skills such as throwing, catching, and kicking are developing. By the age of six or seven, children begin to integrate two or more of these skills. Though all children will not develop these skills at the same age, they will follow the same sequence.

As children progress through the early stages of their lives they will continually reach milestones that are somewhat of a tracker as to where they stand in their development, but at the same time it’s important to remember that even though there are suggested milestones as to a maturing task for a specific age and month, each child may mature differently than the next. One part of this progress that children will continually develop through in the early stages of their lives is motor skill development, which is the use of their larger and smaller muscles to perform adult like tasks. More specifically this development can be categorized into fine and

There are many physical advantages to gross motor skill development that play a role both in childhood and throughout the rest of that individual’s lifetime. Motor skills that are developed in infancy are essential steps to continue to build motor skills throughout childhood (Burns et al., 2017). In order to have the best physical potential to be able to carry out daily activities, gross motor skills are where this all begins. To have optimal function, an individual must learn how to control their movements with poise and rhythm.

Nowadays, more and more children have obesity compare to the children in thirty years ago. The research showed that children who have obesity in their early age may cause either short-term or long-term consequence. The short-term consequence for the obesity children include low self-esteem and the long-term consequence includes asthma and heart disease. (CDC) The best way to prevent these is to encourage children do at least one hour physical exercise a day within the trained instructor guided. ( Epstein 2014) My paper is mainly focused on how my curriculum promote physical development in a child care center.