7 Motor Skills that Support Academic Performance

Did you know building your child’s motor skills is not only for staying healthy and strong, but also for supporting different aspects of your child’s learning development?

7 Motor Skills needed for better Academic Performance

#1 – Hand-eye Coordination

A strong development of hand-eye coordination can prepare the brain and body for handwriting, letter formation and tracking words across the page

#2 – Bilateral Coordination

Developing bilateral coordination is an important skill needed for simple tasks like holding the paper with one hand while the other writes across the page.

#3 – Core Muscle

Believe it or not, a strong core can help a child sit upright in their chair while supporting the head for copying notes off the chalkboard.

#4 – Balance and Coordination

If a child’s balance is off, you may begin to see them fidget in their chair. Building better balance and coordination can support your child’s attention and focus, emotional regulation and behavior.

#5 – Crossing the Midline

Crossing the midline activities are important for brain development. They can help a child track words across the page, problem solve and write words from sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph.

#6 – Back to Front Activities

Because higher learning takes place in the higher centers of the brain, kids can do back to front activities to help organize thoughts, improve speech and language, support memory and help follow directions.

#7 – Patterning

Playing games and participating in activities that require different patterns help kids with sequencing, fact retention, math and equations.