The Effects Of Occupational Therapy On Early Childhood Grades Essay

They have many different puzzles at their disposal and their teachers are always there to play with them. Building a castle with blocks and keeping it all in a line and not allowing it to fall is a great way to work on fine motor skills. Making sure that the puzzle pieces in the wooden dinosaur puzzle fit into the correct space and turning it until it reaches the correct position. These are all little ways that we help tune the fine motor skills.

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,

Fine motor control allows infants to exercise their hand muscles which helps them to play with toys. Some atypical behaviors are keeping hands closed without opening them and not grasping when objects are placed in the palm of the hand.

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.

What began as involuntary movement and reflexes at birth, by 6 months have become voluntary movements. By 2 years the fine motor skills are beginning to develop. Gross motor skills involve the large muscles of the body that enable such functions as crawling, kicking, sitting upright and rolling over. It is a little harder for an infant to walk because they are top heavy and their thighs are too big to support their little feet. Most infants, starting at nine months begins to learn how to walk. Fine motor skills are necessary to engage in smaller, more precise movements, normally using the hands and fingers. Fine motor skills are different than gross motor skills which require less precision to perform. This is the child's ability to use small muscles, specifically their hands and fingers, to pick up small objects, hold a spoon, turn pages in a book, or use a crayon to draw.

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.

So many children this day in age, are sat in front of a television or a tablet and expected to keep quiet. Children are built to explore, move, and learn from their experiences, and this cannot happen when a child is inside, being distracted by technology. No matter how busy parents are, they should find at least thirty minutes a day to go outside and play with their children. If the weather does not permit outside play, then playing games inside is always a great alternative. Parents should be encouraging their children to develop the motor skills that they are going to need in order to succeed in school and later in life. Many parents encourage the development of their children’s gross motor skills by involving them in sports, dance, or gymnastics. These programs are great for not only teaching children how to be good at something they love, but they also encourage children to develop their motor skills. If parents find that they cannot afford programs such as these, they can focus on providing multiple opportunities for play. For example, one day they could go to the park or they could go over the neighbor’s house to play. Ultimately, the best thing that parents can do to encourage the development of their children’s motor skills is to allow them to play as much as possible and to allow them to try new activities, even if they are

An occupational therapist is a trained and licensed health care professional who can make a complete evaluation of the impact of disease on the activities of the patient at home and in work situations. Hobbies and recreational activities are considered when an assessment is made. The most generally accepted definition of occupational therapy is that it is an activity, physical or mental, that aids in a patient’s recovery from disease or injury.

During the early childhood period, environments should be organized to promote motor development. During toddlerhood the environment should be organized to allow the toddler space to explore and move. Confining the child to a limited space such as a playpen could result in a delay in their large motor skills. (Charlesworth, 2004) The environment for the preschooler should be conducive to learning these skills. Adequate outdoor play time should be allotted for the children to have the opportunity to run, jump, throw balls, and other activities to strengthen the large muscles.

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

Gross motor skills seem to be highly underrated in the development of children. While we take notice of mental disabilities and severe physical impairments, we tend to overlook the importance of gross motor skills in children. Just as a healthy diet is critical to the development of young children, gross motor skills are imperative to a strong, healthy start to many developmental aspects of a child.

A child also starts using gross and fine motor skills in sporting activities. Fine motor skills include using the small muscles that are found in the hands, arms, and fingers to use and control tools and materials. Gross motor skills involve controlling the head, trunk, legs, and arms. An early childhood professional

This kind of skill enables children to take more responsibility for their personal care. Example of fine motor activities includes writing and drawing. The writing skill of children in middle childhood tends to be large, and clear enough to be read easily. Besides that, schoolchildren show improvements on drawing skill in organization, detail, and complexity representation (Papalia et al., 2009).

Fine motor skills refer to the ‘small muscles’ in the hands. Proper development of these muscles is crucial for children to succeed academically in writing and self help skills. According to the National Childcare Accreditation Council (NCAC), “Fine motor skills form an important foundation for the acquisition of many other skills, including literacy, numeracy, self-help and the ability to perform many everyday tasks” (2008). Children start to develop motor skills from birth, and the ways in which children’s muscles develop will later affect their motor function. Caretakers often look for the typical milestones that infants develop; however, infants acquire development at different rates benefiting child growth. From birth through the early grades (preschool to second grade) children are constantly using their fine motor skills to eat, dress themselves, and in social settings such as school. These skills link to infancy development and are factors in knowing how well children will succeed. The following sub-topics address fine motor development and the importance of occupational therapy interventions:

A few examples of Fine Motor activities displayed during the early years include handwriting skills, drawing pictures, making objects out of clay, and even cutting with scissors. Each of these activities is characterized by including the small-muscle developments that involve finger-thumb coordination, hand-eye coordination, and the development of muscle strength in the hand and arm. All in all, motor skills are an important part of the learning process, and as these “fundamental motor skills are learned...[they] serve as the foundation for more specialized motor skills that will be