Coordination and Motor Skills
Coordination and motor skills allow us to move our body parts to do a particular action. As children grow, they reach different milestones of their motor skills. There are important building blocks to develop a child's coordination and motor skills. Some of these building blocks include: attention and concentration, body awareness, postural support, muscular strength, bilateral integration and sensory processing.
The Movement Assessment Battery for Children is a standardised assessment that can be completed by an Occupational Therapist to assess for motor coordination difficulties. What coordination and motor difficulties may look like:
- Fall over easily and have difficulties in recovering from being off balance
- Lacking body fluidity - body appears stiff
- Have difficulty with getting dressed standing up
- Later to reach their developmental milestones
- Tire quicker than peers
- Less aware of personal space
What can you do to help your child?
- Make it fun! Include physical activities your child enjoys. Think about creating a circuit
- Start with focusing on the core area, this is your child's stabilisation and main area to build the arms and legs
- Walking on a pretend tightrope line
- Practicing keeping the beanbag on your child's head
- Climbing frames and general climbing
- Swimming
- Standing on one leg
- Throwing, catching and kicking a ball
- Aiming a ball
- Playing tug of war
- Use of a swiss ball - sitting and throwing
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