Motor skills: fine, free, gross, exercises with baby

Motor skills fine free gross exercises with baby

Motor skills play an important role in the development and autonomy of young children. Fine, global, free motor skills… Sandra Noel, psychomotrician, tells us more about the different motor skills that exist and their benefits.

In the child, the motor skills refers to the ability to move with the whole body, its limbs (arms, forearms, hands, legs, thighs, feet) and its muscles. These same movements allow you to perform different daily tasks (walking, dancing, running, grabbing a pen, etc.). Motricity is therefore an integral part of the process of child development. As he grows, he will develop his motor skills and it is generally in the first years of a child’s life that we can detect a possible mobility disorder and correct it with a psychomotrician. Moreover, there is not one motricity but several motricities. “Our motricity allows us to communicate, to learn and to enrich ourselves cognitively but also to express ourselves emotionally and all this in both directions. It’s as much to give as it is to receive.“, explains Sandra Noel, psychomotor therapist. What are the different types of motor skills? Answers and expert advice.

What is gross motor skills?

Gross motor skills correspond to general motor activitiesthis includes in particular large coordinations/dissociations between the upper and lower body but also between the 4 limbs“, details the specialist. “This allows us to move by regulating posture and action, to promote body control skills such as balance management. But it is also capacities intimately linked to cognitive activity with the conscious or unconscious need for planning and gestural programming, and for rectification if necessary, which is called feedback.“, she adds.

Our activity ideas for gross motor skills

You can stimulate baby, by encouraging him to move around so that he can grab toys, put him face down on you, put him in a prone position (cobra position) on the floor so that he can experiment with his movements, etc. If the child is a little older: throwing and catching a ball, obstacle course, skipping rope etc. can be useful.

What is fine motor skills?

There fine motor skills are dissociated from gross motor skills because it leads to a more stabilized general posture to promote motor skills of the upper limbs“, defines the expert. In fine motor skills, there are many aspects: either we are located according to the different types: gripping, bi-manual coordination, tool gripping, digital untying, etc. Either we situate ourselves according to the stages: we first find the grippingTHE similar coordinations Then complementary which make it possible to invest the space as a whole, then gradually it plays a key role in the autonomy with the dressing praxis then in the learning practices with drawing/cutting.

Our activity ideas for fine motor skills

For a baby, stacking toys, kneading balls, sensory sachets etc. For a slightly older child, modeling clay, Kapla, balance games, coloring and cutting.

Fine motor skills and graphics

“THE graphic design is an even more complex component than fine motor skillsit is often dissociated because they are really coordinations in their own right“, recalls Sandra Noel. There are 3 levels in this area: motor skills, perception (space is a fundamental element in psychomotricity, a body necessarily moves in a space) and the representative.

Our activity ideas for graphic design

You can opt for exploration bins, graphic tracks to reproduce using a pencil, the 7 errors game, the Lynx game, etc.

What is relational motor skills?

Motricity is not limited to purely motor activities. From a psycho-cognitive-affective point of view, we find relational motricity linked to infraverbal dialogue. These are, for example, symbolic gestures, but also from an early age the tonic-emotional dialogue present between the infant and its parents. Motor skills are also a source of learning with gestural imitation which plays a very important role in the development, in particular of cognitive functions.“, underlines the psychomotrician. Our motor skills gradually lead to a better representation of our body, what in psychomotricity is called the body schema. Our posture, our gestures are intimately linked to this knowledge.

“Motricity is also a source of learning with gestural imitation which plays a very important role in development”.

What is free or autonomous motor skills?

Free motricity, or autonomous motricity, is a concept invented by Emmi Pikler in the 1960s. This Hungarian pediatrician is the first to have observed and theorized the essential role played by spontaneous activity in the development of the baby. “It is a key concept for the development of the child because it consists in creating an environment favorable to the child to develop without the need to solicit him passively. It is to make him active in his development”details Sandra Noel.

Free motor skills have been very fashionable for a few years. It presents many benefits. “Free motor skills allow the child not to skip developmental stages. It enhances his skills and allows him to build a good self-esteem and self-confidence. It also creates motivation in the child and good exploratory skills”, adds Sandra Noel. She also has an interest in parents because, the child gaining autonomyit avoids falling into useless dependencies where the child constantly asks his parent to perform an action.

“Free motricity enhances the child’s skills and allows him to build a beautiful self-esteem and self-confidence.”

What are motor activities?

THE motor activities are broadly exercises focused on the child’s movement needs. If the latter has acquired bad habits in terms of his gestures or his positions, the practitioner will set up a course or a series of exercises adapted to the child to enable him to modify his habits and learn the good gestures.

What is the role of the psychomotrician for a child?

In the child, we will help him in his psychomotor development through playful activities with a therapeutic climate containing and rewarding. For parents, we are present in parental guidance to help them sharpen their gaze and help them in their daily life as parents in relation to the psychomotor functions of their child”details the specialist.

The latter reminds us that psychomotricity is at the crossroads between motricity, affectivity and cognition. The role of the psychomotor therapist thus goes from prevention to rehabilitation and concerns all psychomotor domains. : gross and fine motor skills, graphics, laterality, body diagram, sensoriality, tone, spatio-temporal organization, attention.

Thanks to Sandra Noel, psychomotrician in Clermont.

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