Fundamental Movement Skills
To become physically literate children need to master fundamental movement skills, but this mastery does not come all at once, and we need to remember that children are not just “adults in miniature”. For almost every skill the developing child needs to go through a series of developmental stages (For example, see Figure 3 to see how throwing changes as the child matures). The goal should be to help each child move to the next most mature version of the skill they are learning, rather than pushing them to perform the skill the way an adult would.
Helping Children Learn Fundamental Movement Skills
Although children mature and learn at different rates, almost all children learn their fundamental movement skills in the same sequence, and go through the same phases: When a child can learn a skill: As a child grows and develops (matures) nerve cells make more connections, while at the same time, the muscles of the body are getting stronger. Until the brain is mature enough, and the muscles strong enough, the child simply cannot learn the skill, and trying to teach the child does little good. What is important at this time is providing the child with as many opportunities to explore all possible movements in a rich environment – which means that the child’s environment needs to be both safe and challenging.
Growth means an increase in body size, such as in height or weight. Maturation is the process in which the child’s body changes to become progressively more like that of an adult.
The child is ready to learn the skill: At a certain point in maturation, all the hardware – the muscles and nerves – have developed enough that the child has the potential to perform a particular skill (the readiness factor), and now they have to learn it. As the skill begins to emerge naturally, learning can be dramatically improved through opportunities for fun practice using lots of different equipment and materials. Giving the child some simple instruction and lots of practice can help the child develop confidence that stays with them for life – although this may not speed up the learning process.
The optimum time to learn the skill: For every emerging skill there is a “best” time for the child to learn. At this time, helping the child though simple instruction and practice can improve learning, and pay great dividends.While the “best” time to teach a particular skill to an individual child varies, there is great consistency in the sequence in which children learn skills. In indication of the best time to teach some of the more common fundamental movement skills can be found in Figure 4 and Figure 5.
Time for remedial work: If the child goes too long without learning a skill, then learning it may become more difficult.However, the sooner the child starts to overcome the learning deficit the easier it will be for them to catch up and develop the skill and confidence needed to be fully active with their friends and peers.