Early Childhood Development - Essay Sample

Introduction

Early Childhood development is a branch which deals with teaching children new skills that will contribute to their development as they grow. This area focuses on different issues that are keen on improving different abilities among the children. According to Grissmer, Grimm, & Aiyer (2010), one of the elements is the Fine Motor Development. Fine Motor Development is an area in early childhood development which deals with the synchronization of the small muscles that are found within the hand as well as the fingers. When a child develops strong fine motor skills, he or she will be able to accomplish tasks such as cutting, writing, using a spoon or a fork, moving puzzle pieces, buttoning, zipping, threading beads and tying shoelaces. This idea has been further discussed in the journal, Effects of Fine motor skills training on Arithmetical Ability in Children (Cameron et al. 2012). From the topic of this article, it is evident that the fine motor skills have some impacts on the arithmetical ability of the children. Therefore, this paper will analyze the effects that the fine motor skills has on the arithmetical ability in children.

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According to the journal, there are various researches which have been done to identify the relationship between fine motor skills and the arithmetical ability that is evident in children. I agree with the journal that most of the researches which have been done have indicated the presence of a close relationship between the arithmetical abilities in children and the fine motor skills (Carlson, Rowe, & Curby 2013). However, there are many studies which have been done which focuses on the correlation that is present in between the fine motor skills as well as the children's arithmetical abilities but failed to identify the causal relationships between them. Therefore, the main purpose of this research intended to come up with the effects that fine motor skills have on the arithmetical ability by looking at the eighty first-graders.

I find that the intervention group that was selected for the research in this journal was appropriate since all of them were children who had started school. One of the results that were obtained from the study indicated that the intervention group which was trained in fine motor skills for ten minutes showed a significant improvement when they were given an arithmetic task to accomplish (Ziegler, & Stoeger, 2010). This group was compared to an active control group that was given 10 minutes to read their favorite book. This group showed a lower performance compared to the intervention groups that was trained in fine motor skills.

These findings from the study have suggested that more people should train in the area of fine motor skills. I resonated with this statement because conducting a training program in this area is appropriate and it will lead to the improvement of fine motor skills (Piek et al., 2010). When the fine motor skills are improved, there will be an increase in the fine motor skills in children. This issue will, in turn, lead to increased arithmetic ability in children. It is true that this study has provided the evidence that there will exist a causal relationship between these elements.

The fine motor skills will help the children to develop their arithmetic ability in different ways. The journal has clearly described that fine motor skills help the children to be able to count their fingers. Counting numbers is the central part of arithmetic's (Pitchford, Papini, & Outhwaite, 2016). Therefore, when a child can count the fingers, he or she will be able to understand numbers properly. When a child understands numbers and can count them correctly, he or she will quickly have a proper arithmetic development. This approach will result in a positive impact on the studies of a child later in the future. The child with strong fine motor skills will turn out to a bright student in math's and will perform exemplary.

Conclusion

Concluding, it is true from the journal that fine motor skills have a certain effect regarding the arithmetic ability in children. Most children who have undergone training in fine motor skills will likely show an improvement in their arithmetic performance. However, those children who were not taken through training would have poor performance when it comes to arithmetic abilities. This concept is essential in early childhood development because it will help the children to develop various skills that will make them have the ability to carry out a different task. One of the ways that this issue is depicted is through the counting of fingers. Counting of fingers is part of the fine motor skills in children. When children can count, they will easily develop numerical skills which is part of arithmetic abilities. This element will help them to have a long term advantage in the future because they will be able to perform well in maths. Several scholars have recommended for the increased training in fine motor skills. When there is increased training more children will be able to improve their fine motor skills which will, in turn, lead to increased arithmetic abilities.

References

Cameron, C. E., Brock, L. L., Murrah, W. M., Bell, L. H., Worzalla, S. L., Grissmer, D., &Morrison, F. J. (2012). Fine motor skills and contribution to kindergarten achievement.Child development, 83(4), 1229-1244.

Carlson, A. G., Rowe, E., & Curby, T. W. (2013). Fine motor skills and its relations to academicachievement: The relative contributions of visual-spatial integration and visual-motorcoordination. The Journal of genetic psychology, 174(5), 514-533.

Grissmer, D., Grimm, K. J., Murrah, W. M., & Steele, J. S. (2010). Fine motor skills and earlychild comprehension of the world: New school readiness indicators. Developmentalpsychology, 46(5), 1008.

Piek, J. P., Smith, L. M., Barrett, N. C. & Gasson, N. (2010). Do motor skills in early childhoodpredict anxious and depressive symptomatology at school age? Human movementscience, 29(5), 777-786.

Pitchford, N. J., Papini, C., Outhwaite, L. A., & Gulliford, A. (2016). Fine motor skills predictmath's ability better than they predict reading ability in the early primary school years -frontiers in psychology, 7, 783.

Ziegler, A., & Stoeger, H. (2010). How fine motor skills influence the assessment of highabilities and underachievement in math. Journal for the Education, 34(2), 195-219.