Motor Skill Development

Occupation Therapist Techniques for Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills are often impaired by disease processes such as Parkinson's disease or multiple sclerosis. Brain injuries such as a stroke, traumatic brain injury or brain tumor also can impair fine motor skills. Even some hand injuries, such as a tendon rupture or burn, can affect your fine motor capabilities. Understanding the nature of your impairment and the purpose of the tasks your occupational therapist assigns to you will help you to see the functional value in your therapy.

All About Motor Skill Development

Therapy Games for Handicapped Child

Occupational therapists often use games and activities to help children practice motor skills, improve coordination and strengthen speech skills. Parents, educators and other caretakers can use these games to actively involve h...

Developmental Milestones Related to Climbing

Climbing is a skill children master incrementally, as they reach developmental milestones for various gross motor skills, according to neurologist Lise Eliot. Climbing typically begins with crawling over objects, progresses to ...

Six Components of Fitness Related to Motor Skills

The six components of motor skills related to fitness are agility, balance, coordination, power, reaction time and speed, according to Glencoe/McGraw-Hill Education. A motor skill is associated with muscle activity. You carry o...

Parkour Facts

Parkour practice involves the ability to negotiate physical obstacles within a chosen path using one's own body. The successful free runner conquers Parkour obstacle courses by quickly adapting his body movements to the immedia...

Activities You Can Do to Improve Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills refer to performing small, precise movements with your hands like tying your shoes or picking up a coin from the floor. A child who is still learning how you use his body would benefit from activities to impro...

Games for Gross Motor Skills

These skills are developed during infancy and early childhood, with most toddlers using these skills successfully by the age of 2. These skills, however, must be built upon, encouraged and practiced for successful development. ...

Motor Skills Needed to Shoot Free Throws

The free throw is an aspect of your basketball game that you can potentially get close to perfecting with consistent practice, as the shot is predicated on balance and muscle memory. Free throws are very easy to practice on you...

How to Develop Skills for Flexibility

Flexibility isn't a skill only for dancers. In fact, David Geier, the director of sports medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina tells CNN.com that he counts flexibility as the third pillar of fitness, next to stre...

Motor Development & Physical Growth

Children's fine and gross motor skills develop as their bodies grow and change. Motor skills involve the brain and nervous system, as well as the muscles. Fine motor skills utilize small muscle groups such as the hands, and con...

Weight Lifting & Motor Skills Development

These structures get stronger and bigger as a result of the stresses placed on them. In addition to these morphological adaptations to exercise, the components of the nervous system also benefit from regular training with weigh...

How Traumatic Births Affect Fine Motor Skills

A traumatic birth can cause a child to develop one of several conditions in which fine motor skills are compromised. Such conditions range from cerebral palsy to dysgraphia, and are typically caused by oxygen starvation occurri...

Classification of Motor Skills

In each sector of scientific study, to simplify discussion of the fundamental principles, special terminology is used. In motor learning research, terminology is used to describe the classification of motor skills, according to...

How to Use a Baitcasting Reel

Baitcasting reels are a specific type of reel that first gained popularity among bass anglers. In recent years, the use of baitcasting reels has spread to other forms of fishing, including freshwater and saltwater fishing types...

Complex Motor Skills in the Frontal Lobes

The frontal lobes are important sections of the brain needed for articulation, emotion and reactivity. According to the Centre for Neuro Skills, the lobes, left and right, control aspects of the personality, coping mechanisms a...

Exercises for Fine Motor Skills

Exercises for fine motor skills can be beneficial for all ages, regardless of whether you have a youngster who needs to develop his fine motor coordination or you are a stroke survivor trying to regain your fine motor coordinat...

LeapFrog Learning Hoops Basketball

Learning Hoops by LeapFrog is a toy created for young children that promotes sensory development, gross motor skills development, cognitive development and emotional development. It is a grow-with-me toy, that your child can en...

Physical Development & Skills

Motor skills develop and improve greatly starting from about two years old. Individuals all develop specific skills and at different rates. This is why some people seem to be born to play a sport. Training for motor skills and ...

Brain Motor Skills

Motor skills are needed to control the movements of the different muscles in the human body. Motor skills are divided into gross and fine motor skills. Gross motor skills are learned first and over the years, they tend to becom...

Ocular Motor Skills

The eyes are controlled by six small muscles that are innervated by three cranial nerves. Like the muscles elsewhere in the body, the ability to accurately exert the eye muscles is something that develops over time; with much o...

Fine Motor Skills Disorders in Later Life

Many disorders can affect fine motor skills in the elderly. According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, Americans are living longer than ever before and many senior citizens...

Ocular Motor Skills in Children

Ocular motor skills refers to the ability of the eyes to track and focus on an object. Good ocular motor skills allow the eyes to move simultaneously in a smooth pattern. Ocular motor skills are an important foundation for fin...

Art for Children

Art plays an invaluable role in a child's emotional and mental development by encouraging creativity, helping to develop motor skills and providing opportunities for hands-on learning, states Susan Jindrich on the Global Develo...

How to Improve Fine Motor Skills in Children

The term "fine motor skills" refers to the ability to use the muscles in your hands to do things like tie your shoes, put jigsaw puzzles together and write. Most children practice these skills daily without even realizing it, b...

How to Improve a 5-Year-Old's Handwriting and Reading

Your 5-year-old is on the cusp of learning to read and is developing the small motor skills necessary to write. According to LD Online, the majority of children learn to read by the time they are 7. At 5, your child might not y...

How to Aid Infant Motor Development

Motor development refers to progress in skills involving physical strength, movement and control. It includes fine motor skills that involve the hands, and gross motor skills that involve the entire body. According to social wo...

How to Develop Fine Motor Skills in Toddlers

The toddler stage refers to the time between infancy and preschool age when children are walking, learning to be independent and mastering the important gross and fine motor skills they will need to move around in and participa...

How to Develop Large Motor Skills

Often, delayed physical development is a result of too little playtime and can be remedied with fun and games. However, seek the advice of a pediatrician if you have concerns about your child's large motor development.

Fine & Gross Motor Skills Activities

The two kinds of skills often develop together in preschool and early elementary school, according to the The Encyclopedia of Children's Health. Parents can aid that development by doing small and gross motor activities wi...

Parts of the Brain That Control Vocal & Motor Skills

While it is the source of intellectual activity, its functions also include interpreting senses, initiating body movement, coordinating motion and balance, and controlling behavior and the ability to speak. Motor skills includ...

How to Develop Gross Motor Skills in Children

Gross motor development refers to the strengthening and control of larger muscles, including the neck, trunk, torso, arms and legs. Gross motor skills develop from the head down, which is evident in babies who gain control of t...

Definition of Motor Skills in Children

Rapid advances in motor or movement skills occur during infancy and early childhood. Motor development reflects a child’s ability to control and direct voluntary muscle movement. Motor control develops from the top down a...

Activities to Enhance Motor Skills

Motor skills are what enable people to perform activities of daily living with any amount of independence. From sitting upright without support to sculpting steel plate into filigree with a blowtorch, the continuum from large-m...

Fine-Motor Skills Milestones for Children

You may wonder if her height or weight is appropriate, whether her vocabulary is adequate or when she will crawl. Another aspect of your child's development is fine-motor skills, in which your child gains better control of her ...

Physical Development Motor Skills for 1-Year-Olds

As far as motor development, she transforms from not being able to roll over to walking on her own in just 12 months. By the age of 1, a baby can even perform some basic life skills, such as feeding herself and drinking from a ...

Motor Development in a Baby

Babies experience two main types of motor development, according to the University of Michigan Health System. Gross motor development includes large muscle groups that allow for sitting, walking, running and other complex movem...

How Your Personality Handles Change

Personality development is an integral part of the growing process. While babies develop fine motor skills and speaking abilities, they also develop a personality. According to the Association for the Advancement of Psychosynth...

Skill Development of Babies

Although babies develop according to their own timetables, they can be expected to learn new skills at a similar pace.

Underdeveloped Fine Motor Skills in Children

Since the signs of underdeveloped fine motor skills are often more subtle than those indicating problems with gross motor skills, which include kicking or running, parents and doctors might miss them until a child starts school...

Physical Development & Motor Skills

Physical development is a term that describes how children grow and how they are able to complete new physical tasks as they grow. Normative physical development is sequential growth that is normal for a specific age and cultur...

Delayed Fine Motor Skills in Children

You can measure developmental skills based on a child's performance of certain tasks by a specific age. Fine motor skills are important for success in accomplishing many articulate tasks. A delay in developing fine motor skills...

Exercises for Developing Fine Motor Skills

Unlike large motor skills, which involve running and leaping, fine motor skills are small and more precise movements. They typically develop more slowly than large motor skills and can take practice to develop. Growing children...

Infant Development Skills

The average infant makes enormous developmental strides during the first year of life. By the time a baby turns 1, he'll likely have mumbled his first few words and taken his first cautious steps. During the first year of life ...

Fine-Motor Skills Trouble in Children

Many fine-motor skill difficulties go undiagnosed during preschool and kindergarten, because of the wide range of abilities among children of these ages. When the more structured learning begins in first grade, children whose m...

Alcohol & Motor Skills

Probably the most popular use of alcohol, however, is consumption for its depressant and inhibition-reducing effects on the brain and body. A negative side effect of drinking alcohol is the deterioration of motor skills directl...

Gross Motor Skills That Enhance Fine Motor Skills

According to Baby Center, fine motor skills are equally as important as gross motor skills. Fine motor skills involve more precise movements using specific body parts such as the hand, thumb, or wrist. The development of gross ...

About Motor Skills in Infants

Your baby's first step is a remarkable achievement. But before he takes that step, he passes through a host of accomplishments, learning a new skill then building on that to move to the next stage of development. The NSDU Exten...

Fine & Gross Motor Skills in Children

His gross motor skills will develop more rapidly than his fine motor skills, which involve more concentration. Although every child is different, there are certain milestones usually reached at specific ages. If you are concer...

The Development of Sensory Skills in Infants

A healthy baby is born with all of the basics necessary for sensory skills, and these skills continue to develop in the early months of his life. Some of his senses may be more mature than others, but they all prove important i...

About Infant Motor Development

The process of infant motor development sets the stage for all of the motor skills a child will learn as he grows up. Although all babies develop at a different pace and have individual strengths and weaknesses, one thing they ...

Infant Motor Development

While it happens at a slightly different pace for all infants, there are general milestones parents can watch for and ways to enhance your baby's motor skills.

Motor Skills for Children

Motor skills tend to grow by leaps and bounds in early and middle childhood. Gross motor skills are large movements that include crawling, sitting, walking, running and throwing. Fine motor skills are used for picking up and l...

Fine & Large Motor Skills

To perform everyday tasks, you need fine and large motor skills. Fine motor skills allow you to write, tie your shoe laces, feed yourself and perform other activities requiring the use of the hands. Large, or gross, motor skill...

Infant Development Skills

During the first year infants undergo dramatic developmental changes. It seems like every day your baby learns some new skill or behavior. In the first few weeks, most behaviors are reflexive and unintentional, but after the fi...

Exercises to Strengthen Fine Motor Skills

A person's musculoskeletal system and neurological impulses must be able to communicate with one another in order to perform each set of fine motor skills, according to the American Heart Association. Developmental delays, trau...

Is My Child Developmentally Delayed?

All babies and children develop at different paces; your child, who cannot yet walk, may be ahead of others his age when it comes to fine motor skills such as picking up small objects. Knowing more about developmental delays wi...

Activities to Encourage the Motor Development of a Baby

Providing baby with ample stimulation will promote mental and physical development. Engaging baby in play can improve her motor skills---an infant's ability carry out most physical activities. Some activities that parents natur...

Children & Motor Skills

Motor development begins at birth and continues through childhood. This development includes gross motor skills (sitting, crawling, walking) and fine motor skills (grasping, picking up, rolling objects). While children develop ...

Developmental Checklist for 4-Year-Old

At the age of 4, your child is considered a preschooler, an age when motor skills, language and social development milestones are achieved at what seems to be a lightning pace. Keep in mind that all children are unique and deve...

What Are Gross Motor Skills?

Gross motor skills begin developing from birth and continue through adolescence. Although motor skills continue to develop throughout life, the early childhood years offer the most potential for the development of gross motor s...

How Do Electric Wheelchairs Work?

Just as the name suggests, electric wheelchairs are fueled and utilized by the power of electricity. This power is created and delivered from a battery that uses motors to move the gears and belts necessary for the chair's move...

3 Ways to Manage Acute Cerebellar Ataxia

A physical therapist can help you learn to manage the coordination issues that affect your daily activities so you can retain your independence. This can be especially important to young children who have acute cerebellar ataxi...

3 Ways to Identify Ataxia-Telangiectasia

A child born with Ataxia-Telangiectasia will appear to develop normally for the first two years of life, but then delayed development of motor skills will become increasingly apparent. The child may begin to exhibit poor balan...