Physical Development
As children grow up and begin to develop they go through many physical changes. Children’s physical development is the outcome of countless orderly changes (McDevitt & Ormrod; 2010). There are certain age groups where children’s development will rapidly occur and then begin to slow down. Over the course of middle childhood children tend to show slow but steady gains in both height and weight (McDevitt & Ormrod; 2010). Throughout this essay we will look at the motor development of children in the middle childhood phase, the benefits physical activity has for children in this phase, how physical activity can either facilitate or restrict physical development and finally the strategies that will support physical development in the middle childhood phase.
The motor development of children in the middle childhood phase includes a child’s gross motor and fine motor skills, their physical growth and cognitive growth both which occur simultaneously and have affects on each other (Croft & Smith; 2008). The motor development skills that children begin to develop during the middle childhood phase come underneath two categories; gross motor development and fine motor development. The gross motor developmental skills that children begin to learn through the childhood phase are; running, jumping, hopping and they begin to develop more refined ball skills. Children also begin to improve skills in the capacity of flexibility, balance, agility and force. The fine motor developmental skills that are acquired in the middle childhood phase are writing and drawing. Children’s writing tends to be large at first and legibility gradually increases, drawings show gains in organisation and detail.
The physical development that occurs in children in the middle childhood phase are changes in both body size and proportion. Children tend to add 2 to 5 cm in height and 2.5kg in weight each year and lose their 20 primary teeth one by one replacing them with permanent teeth that at first
The motor development of children in the middle childhood phase includes a child’s gross motor and fine motor skills, their physical growth and cognitive growth both which occur simultaneously and have affects on each other (Croft & Smith; 2008). The motor development skills that children begin to develop during the middle childhood phase come underneath two categories; gross motor development and fine motor development. The gross motor developmental skills that children begin to learn through the childhood phase are; running, jumping, hopping and they begin to develop more refined ball skills. Children also begin to improve skills in the capacity of flexibility, balance, agility and force. The fine motor developmental skills that are acquired in the middle childhood phase are writing and drawing. Children’s writing tends to be large at first and legibility gradually increases, drawings show gains in organisation and detail.
The physical development that occurs in children in the middle childhood phase are changes in both body size and proportion. Children tend to add 2 to 5 cm in height and 2.5kg in weight each year and lose their 20 primary teeth one by one replacing them with permanent teeth that at first