13.6: Supporting Perceptual-Motor Skills and Movement Concepts
13.6: Supporting Perceptual-Motor Skills and Movement Concepts
Perceptual-motor skills and movement concepts are essential to all facets of young children’s lives. Perceptual-motor coordination is the process of receiving, interpreting, and using information from all of the body’s senses. Perceptual-motor development requires children to integrate both sensory and motor abilities to carry out physical activities. All voluntary movement involves an element of perception, and perceptual-motor coordination plays an important role in children’s development of movement skills.
Movement concepts are the cognitive component of movement. Preschool children gain important knowledge about how the body can move in an almost endless variety of ways. For example, they learn to move at different speeds and with different degrees of force, in various pathways, around different types of obstacles, and in relation to other people. They are also acquiring new vocabulary (e.g., zigzag, under, or behind) that describe their movement experiences. Movement concepts enable children to problem-solve how the body should move during certain activities and situations. Movement concepts provide critical foundations for learning how to move in novel situations (e.g., when playing a new sport). To become proficient movers, children need to acquire both the movement skills and the movement concepts underlying those skills.
Children enter preschool with various experiences and abilities in perceptual-motor coordination and understanding of movement concepts. Children’s growth in perceptual-motor skills and movement concepts leads to increased success and confidence when exploring, performing personal care, and playing cooperatively with others. Perceptual-motor skills and movement concepts are also key building blocks for future learning in areas such as reading, writing, and mathematics.
Perceptual-motor skills and understanding movement concepts includes body awareness, spatial awareness, and directional awareness.[1]
Body Awareness
Children’s knowledge of their bodies becomes more accurate and specific. They develop a clear understanding of how body parts interrelate (e.g., the shoulder connects to the arm, which connects to the hand). Children are also learning to identify, describe, and differentiate an increasing number of body parts. Furthermore, they can demonstrate different ways to move specific body parts (e.g., the shoulder can move up and down, out to the side, or in a circular motion). Body awareness is necessary for coordinating physical movements when new skills are being learned, such as hopping or throwing. Accurate knowledge about body parts also enhances children’s ability to care for their own bodies, such as during toileting, bathing, and dressing.
1.0 Body Awareness
| At around 48 months of age | At around 60 months of age |
| 1.1 Demonstrate knowledge of the names of body parts. | 1.1 Demonstrate knowledge of an increasing number of body parts. |
Teacher