Fundamental Skills
Gym Kids Fundamental skills to help us reach overall goals:
Gross Motor
Gross motor refers to larger muscles groups of the body. Movements of the whole arm, the legs, the trunk, are all gross motor movements. Thus, gross motor skills are skills that develop through using the large muscles of the body in a coordinated and controlled way. Many people think that gross motor skills enable a child to be good at sports. They are only partly correct. Good gross motor skills can do so much more than that - they can influence a child's ability to write well, to read well and even to concentrate in the classroom.
Coordination
Whether playing games, taking part in sports or doing schoolwork, coordination skills are very important. Many tasks which require coordination also require the child to be able to plan well - being able to time their movements, predict what will happen if they do something, and react to a situation (eg a ball coming at them more slowly than expected) as well as using symmetrical movements (eq rolling a rolling pin back and forth) We will work on both bilateral coordination and hand eye coordination.
Hand Dominance
When one hand is consistently used more than the other hand, and is more skilled at tasks than the other hand, then that hand is considered to be the dominant hand. Most children will begin to develop a dominant hand between 2 and 4 years of age. Some people are good at using both hands, but it is much better for a child to develop strength and dexterity in one hand. This will help them to develop accuracy and speed with fine motor tasks, particularly handwriting.
Midline Crossing
Midline Crossing is the ability for one hand to spontaneously move over to the other side of the body to work there. Before this ability is established, you may have noticed that your young child tends to use the left hand on the left side of the body and the right hand on the right side of the body. You might ask, why is midline crossing so important? When your child spontaneously crosses the midline with the dominant hand, then the dominant hand is going to get the practice that it needs to develop good fine motor skills. If your child avoids crossing the midline, then both hands will tend to get equal practice at developing skills, and your child's true handedness may be apparently delayed which can make handwriting very awkward for them. We WILL NOT ever try to make a child dominant with one hand over the other; we will be working skills to help them determine which is the dominant hand.
Fine Motor
Fine motor control generally refers to control over the small movements of the hands and fingers, as well as the small muscles of the face, mouth (tongue) and feet. However, the focus is usually on developing the skills of the small muscles in the hands.
