1.2 Explain The Importance Of Physical Development In Children

Our daycare consists of children from the age 1-4 years old and at this age physical development is really important because this is a big stage where they start developing muscles including fine motor skills, gross motor skills, sleeping and eating. With that broad area of skills a lot of challenges are faced while children spend this time in their life learning how to control their body.
Muscle development is divided into two groups with fine motor skills and gross motor skills. Fine motor skills incorporate the tiny muscles in the hands, fingers, toes, lips, and tongue while gross motor skills involve the larger muscles in the arms, legs, and torso (Rathus 80). Sleeping takes a big part in a child’s life when they spend almost 16
At one point of the day children should playtime or some type of physical activity to engage the larger group of muscles. Some activities mentioned by Walsh that kids playing with different types of running, jumping, and climbing games such as hopscotch, climbing on a playground, playing tag or having them skip, hop on one foot, crab walks, duck walks, jump rope, and balancing on one foot. You could also combine many of those activities and turn it into an obstacle course for children trying to navigate through and completing “missions” or turning it into a game. Children should also play with different types of balls when they are at the age 0-2 years because just lifting and playing with the ball help start the development of muscles, playing a little tug of war with the infants helps develop strength in those muscles (Walsh). Children from 2-4 can start throwing and kicking these different sizes of balls to further help develop their bodies, while also at this age encourage uninterrupted play so children can entertain themselves and let them figure things out on their own (Walsh). Drawing helps children experience how to grip crayons and pencils from an early age and later on you can teach them how to hold the coloring utensil like an adult and have them copy you when drawing shapes and letters or with advance children teaching them how to spell their name; his helps with the fine motor skills in the fingers and hand develop can help with the the child controlling their body part (“Activities”). Playing in a pool or sprinkler with supervision can help develop those motor skills as well. For instance an infant playing with a sponge squeezing the water out and lifting it full of water helps with muscle development and with fine motor skills or filling a cup with water and dumping it out, squirt guns, or stirring helps