The Effects of Active Plays on Child’s Gross Motor Coordination

Poster Presentation
Paper ID : 1217-SSRC
Authors
1Msc. Student of Motor Learning and Control. Department of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences. Faculty of Sport sciences and Health. University of Tehran. Tehran. Iran.
2Phd. Graduate of Motor Control.Department of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, Faculty of Sport Sciences and Health, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
3Assistant Professor of Motor Control and Learning. Department of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, Faculty of Sport Sciences and Health, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
Background: Children's active plays provide opportunities for children to benefit from physical activities in the context of promoting fundamental motor skills (FMS). FMS mainly emphasizes gross motor coordinative skills which are the building blocks of more advanced and sport-specific motor skills learned at later stages, however, the effectiveness of such classes on children’s motor coordination needs more investigation.
Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the effect of eight weeks of active plays classes on gross motor coordination of preschool children
Methods: Thirty 5-years-old preschool children participated with parental consent. The experimental group (n=15) attended eight weeks of 60-minute sessions of FMS-based child's active plays classes (3 sessions per week) and the control group continued their daily usual activities in kindergarten. All Participants' coordination were measured pre and post-intervention using the body coordination test for children (KTK3+) tool including walking backward (8 steps × 3 trials × 3 beams of 6, 4.5, and 3 cm width), moving sideways (as many side crossover on two boxes as possible for two trials in 20s), and jumping sideways (as many jump over a wooden lath as possible for two trials in 15s), and also Faber’s eye-hand coordination test (throw a tennis ball at a rectangle target on a flat wall with one hand and catch with two hands as many times as possible for two trials in 30s). One-way ANCOVA test were used to evaluate the post-intervention effect controlling the pretest score as a covariate at α=0.05 level of significance.
Results: The results showed a significant effect of the children's active plays intervention on walking backward (f(1,27)=24.805, P<0.005, partial η2=0.479), moving sideways (f(1,27)=29.117, P<0.005, partial η2=0.519), jumping sideways (f(1,27)=32.115, P<0.005, partial η2=0.543), and eye-hand coordination (f(1,27)=45.868, P<0.005, partial η2=0.629). Bonferroni post hoc test showed that for all measured variables the experimental group outperformed the control group (P<0.05).
Discussion: In addition to overall physical health and mental well-being benefits, active plays also contribute to the promotion of children's gross motor coordination. Future research on other aspects of children's motor skills and the promotion of children's active plays are recommended.
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