Practice, practice and practice

Two of the main goals of physical education are to learn through movement and learn how to move. The first part has been shown along these months, but what about the second one? As the other aim, the way to learn how to move is again through movement.

It is crucial that children learn basic motor skills and physical education is in charge of this essential task. However, there is not so much time for children to develop them. Teachers should be aware of the fact that motor skills mature from the age of 2 to the age of 7. Probably less time than we had expected.

                 

Fortunately, these basic motor skills mature automatically as long as the child has enough practice. Therefore, the teacher only has to promote the performance of all of them in order to acquire his commitment. The great majority of them set competitive games in which the practice of basic motor skills is essential to play the game. Nonetheless, the competition itself blur the main goal which is not winning the game but being aware of the good performance of the basic motor skills. As a result, some children do not take care while doing the motor patterns and thus do not improve their basic motor skills. Moreover, the acquisition of the basic motor skills is also subject to sociological factors. For instance, it has been proved that there are differences regarding basic motor skills due to gender and this is not because one is better than the other but owing to the cultural habits. Therefore, it is very important that the teacher sets the most suitable activities taking into account all of these facts.

               

In order to learn all these ideas we analyzed the basic motor skills of several subjects with different ages and gender. As the records were in a computer program we were able to put the video in slow motion so as to observe the movement in detail. It was really interesting because we judged if the motor patterns were well performed and also if the basic motor skill was or not mature and why. Through these examples we realized what are the main stages of development of different basic motor skills and also we learned to detect lack of practice regarding this issue.

Basic motor skills are essential for life, but there is little time to have them mature. Therefore, it is very important that children practice all of them as much as they can because they will be the key for future actions and chances.