Child Motor Skill Development: Milestones and Stages
Child Motor Skill Development Stages
Gross Motor Skill Milestones
Voluntary movements are fundamental to a child’s development. Gross motor skills involve large muscle groups and are crucial for mobility and coordination. Key milestones include:
Balance and Coordination
This is one of the most complicated aspects, encompassing both dynamic and static balance.
Running (Race)
Around 18 months, children begin to walk more quickly, progressing to running without lifting their feet too high off the ground.
Climbing
At 12 months, children may climb using a crawling ladder. They typically begin climbing stairs independently around one year later, and can descend them by three years old.
Jumping
Jumping starts around two and a half years old, but a significant leap in skill occurs around three months after initial attempts. By five years old, children can jump on one leg.
Kicking
At two years, children can kick, but without precision or balance, often just pushing the ball forward. By five to six years, the movement is perfected.
Throwing (Release)
Initially, objects are released by chance after falling. Children then practice throwing from different positions.
Catching (Reception)
This is a very complicated skill. Its effectiveness depends on reaction time and execution.
Targeting / Precision Placement
This requires oculomotor-mental coordination.
Striking (Hit)
A highly complex skill, requiring well-developed senses, spatial perception, spatial-temporal relation, and limb coordination for accurate hits.
Fine Motor Skill Development
Fine motor behavior evolves significantly between 4 and 12 years, progressing from simple actions to complex ones. Drawing studies provide insight into precision development:
Early Drawing Precision
- At 4 years old: Children play with small figures and focus on placement accuracy. Squares are nearly round, and triangles and circles are often confused with open shapes.
- At 5 years old: There is greater precision. Squares are more accurate, and triangles are somewhat confused with closed shapes.
- At 7 years old: Circles show little margin for error for figures.
- At 8 years old: Children can reproduce drawings almost accurately.
Cratty’s Stages of Drawing and Writing
Cratty conducted a more explicit study, describing the stages of scribbling, learning to write, or drawing:
- Attention: Shown to an element to write or use for grasping.
- Rudimentary Scribbling: Without following a specific pattern.
- Reaction to Stimuli: Reacting to stimuli in the area where the child writes, starting at the edge.
- Simple Geometric Figures: Drawing simple geometric figures like crosses.
- More Accurate Geometric Figures: More accurate geometric figures and accurately colored drawings.
- More Complex Drawings: Including houses, people, etc.
- Introduction of Letters: Children begin to introduce letters into their drawings.
- Complex Three-Dimensional Images: If there is sustained interest and appropriate education, children can draw more complex three-dimensional images.
Kellogg’s Visual-Motor Control Stages
Between 15 and 30 months, there is a significant breakthrough in visual-motor control. Rhoda Kellogg, based on her collection of over one million children’s drawings, enumerated the stages in visual-motor control:
Scribbling Stage
Scribbling initially occurs due to accidental causes or by imitation of other children or adults. Wavering lines eventually become resolved and repetitive. Children react to their scribbles: if the shapes are small, they clear them up by painting; if they are large, they blur the inside, trying to balance a figure by doing another on the opposite side. At two years, children will make imprecise lines, sometimes with a ribbon or two. Shortly after, they will make drawings using very little space, and create wavy curls. Later, these lines will become larger, and they will discover spiral shapes. In the middle of the third year, children are in the diagram phase, drawing pictures in different ways. By four years, drawings are characterized by geometric shapes (concentric circles intersected by lines that intersect in the center), and family elements and stick figures begin to appear.
Combinations and Accumulations
This stage follows the drawing of simple geometric figures. The first involves combining figures to form a pattern. The second involves including more than three figures in a single drawing.
Pictorial Stage
This stage involves several phases:
- Drawing circles with marks inside simulating facial features. The initial circle is the head, and added strokes represent limbs.
- Strokes are added to represent the trunk, and hands and feet are drawn. The face is refined, and eyes and a mouth are added.
- Thick limbs and a trunk are added, resembling a doll.