Grade K • Physical Well-Being and Motor Development What Your Child Will Learn

Grade K Physical Well-Being and Motor Development

What YOur Child Will Learn

 Gross Motor

Children will experience planned experiences that support gross motor development. Play, movement, and physical activity are important elements for development. Gross motor abilities share connections with fine motor skills; additionally, time devoted to gross motor development allows children to participate in vigorous and noisy outdoor play, as well as express themselves through movements such as walking, jumping, and maintaining balance. Playgrounds are designed and properly inspected for the kindergarten students. Playing outside will occur daily as weather permits. Children will have room to run, jump, throw, and climb. If the children are inside for physical well-being and motor development, a large space will be made available for them as a comparable replacement. 

Gross Motor

• Walks on tiptoe
• Running and jumping
• Balance on one leg
• Trapping and Catching
• Throwing
• Jumps rope

Fine Motor

A child's hand needs to be strong enough to hold a pencil and other writing utensils; therefore, kindergarten fine motor instruction begins with providing students opportunities to strengthen their fine motor skills as they learn to write.  The students will color, cut, glue, and write throughout the year.  

A child must have developed the small muscles in their palm and fingers to hold a pencil correctly. Kindergarten teachers intentionally plan activities that support this development.  For example, children may use tweezers and beads to make sets at a math center. The tweezers requires the child to pinch with his fingers which is the same motion needed to grasp a pencil.  Students have many opportunities to use a variety of writing materials during the day to encourage the forming of letters, shapes and pictures.

Letter formation follows a developmental progression.  Most children enter kindergarten with the readiness skills required to begin formal handwriting instruction which begins in kindergarten. Students receive instruction on the proper formation of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet.  

Fine Motor

• Pushing marker caps off and on
• Thread small beads on a string
• Using a paper punch to make holes
• Using scissors to cut on a printed line
• Tie shoelaces
• Draw a person with six parts
• Drawing with crayons and markers
• Painting with a brush at the easel
• Using chalk on the chalkboard
• Drawing simple shapes
• Writing letters and numbers with control
• Holding a pencil in a pincer grasp
• Drawing and labeling a picture