Fine motor skills are the small body movements in a child, including the movements of the writs, hands, eyes, fingers, feet, tongue, lips, and the toes, amongst other body parts. Motor skills are an essential part of child development. There are different stages of child development, and at every step, a child is only capable of handling certain activities. By enhancing child ability to move their body parts and enhance their capabilities, educators are strengthening the children’s motor skills (Hemmati et al., 2008). Examples of motor skills include drawing, jumping, playing games, caring for pets, amongst others. A child does not learn all thee at once. Therefore, this paper presents two fine motor skills for children aged 9 to 10 years; coding skills and playing advanced puzzles.
The school-going age children usually have some smooth and robust motor skills. However, the school-age kids’ coordination, including eye-hand coordination, balance, endurance, and physical abilities differ. Since the motor skills vary with the individual kid, they affect the strength of the child to dress correctly, write neatly, and accomplish certain chores like washing the dishes and making their beds.
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For children older than nine years, they are much taller than kids aged six years. The older children also weigh more and are better built. The children aged between nine and ten are, therefore, more developed in terms of their motor skills compared to their younger counterparts aged 6 to 7 years. Even with this in mind, genetic factors play a lot in a child’s development, as well as exercise and nutrition, which affect their growth and development.
By the age of five years, on average most children have developed above the fine motor skills of preschool age. Children above five years can draw images that are a little clear, including human shapes with legs and features connected to the main trunk. Besides drawing, five-year-old children can also cut items, paste, and trace different objects and shapes. At five, children can fasten visible buttons, and they can tie their own bows and even shoelaces. At this age, the children have properly established left or right-handedness. They can use the appropriate hand for drawing and writing.
Between six years and twelve years, children should have mastered eye and hand coordination. These are children in early school age, and they should be in a position to use eating utensils and other tools. They should also in a position to help with home chores like mopping the house, sweeping the floor, and dusting (Shingjergji, 2013). At school, both 6-year child and nine-year child can draw, make different kinds of crafts at different exert levels, and can write. As the children grow, they begin to fine-tune their motor skills through more advanced activities like sporting, hobbies, using a computer, learning musical instruments, and even playing video games.
Therefore, it is important to note that there are excellent motor activities that a 9-12-year school-aged kid can do that a 6-7-year-old kid cannot do; these are discussed below:
Puzzles
When a child turns, flip, remove a piece of the puzzle, they are learning about eye-hand-coordination. For children aged 6-7, or 9 to 12, they have developed necessary fine motor skills. Most of them have developed eye and vision coordination skills. They are all able to identify certain pieces and make a connection. The children of this age have developed eye and hand coordination skills for playing simple puzzle games. They can manipulate the puzzles accordingly and fit it where it belongs. However, not all puzzles are the same; some are more complex than others. There are puzzle games for 6-year-olds, and those meant for 12-year-olds. Such puzzle games are demanding, and they require more advanced brain work to play through the game successfully.
For instance, Kendoku puzzle games are suitable for the 9-12 year kids; on the other hand, they cannot be played by the 6-7-year-old kids because they are not able to figure it out. This fine motor skill is required for making the children develop a more robust thinking capacity (Beilei et al., 2002). The complex jigsaw and other types of complex puzzles help the older children aged nine to twelve years enhance their memories. For example, they will need to recall the colors, sizes, and shapes of different pieces as they work through the puzzles. If a piece does not fit in its rightful place, it is set aside, but they will need this piece later when the time comes. The puzzles for ten-year-olds also helps the kids to set small goals and objectives for themselves. They will need at different stages or when starting to play to create their own strategy for winning the game in case they are playing against an opponent. For example, a simple strategy may be to pile all the pieces in terms of sizes, shapes, or colors.
Coding
With technology becoming more ubiquitous in today’s world, coding has become a requisite for basic literacy. It is thus not a preserve of future computer programmers and engineers, but a skill beneficial for children as young as 9-10 years of age. Coding improves the skills in children, helping them develop in creativity, problem-solving, and collaboration, and even in persistence. Thus it is a perfect example of fine motor skill activity for children aged between 10 and 12 that a 6-7-year-old cannot play.
Coding is an advanced activity and is good exercise for the children aged nine and above for enhancing their fine motor skills while at the same time, gaining technical skills, cognitive skills, critical and real-life skills. Coding requires basic knowledge of the computer; most six-year-olds are still learning about computer parts like using the mouse, using the keyboard, and other simple tasks on a computer. However, a ten-year-old has learned the computer basics, and can now use the computer at a much higher level, applications. At ten or twelve, the children can begin learning computer primary coding languages like Html. Coding calls for highly coordinated hand and finger movements, and they learn problem-solving skills whereby they break complex tasks into smaller parts. This teaches them how a software engineer approaches a problem employing computational thinking and logic. This is thus a powerful skill for them a bit at school and home.
Creativity skills are also acquired where they learn to crate and not use consuming digital media using proper organizational skills. They also learn the ability to focus on a specific task and notice the fine details. This persistence equips them with valuable skills where the tacking of complex coding skills comes with mistakes that can be very frustrating at times. Coding teaches the children how to remain steadfast during adversities and challenges and go further to look for solutions by collaborating with others, and this makes them enjoy coding with peers because similar interests conjoin them.
References
Beilei, L., Lei, L., Qi, D., & von Hofsten, C. (2002). The development of fine motors and their relations to children’s academic achievement. Acta Psychologica Sinica , 34 , 494-499.
Hemmati, S., Amiri, N., Solemani, F., & Dadkhah, A. (2008). Comparison of motor skills in Children with developmental coordination disorder and normal peers. Iranian Rehabilitation Journal , 6 (1), 5-12.
Shingjergji, A. (2013). Psychomotor education, an aspect of general formation of pre-school children. The Journal of Education, Culture, and Society , (1), 121-132.
