Watching the Fine motor activities

The second time we went to St. Mary’s school Professor Yang had us watch the students’ fine motor skills and the differences between grade level, gender and ability. When I observed the students at St. Mary’s I noticed many different things about there motor development. I worked with third graders in our last lab and many of them were very good at skills I asked them to do. They were able to run and jump but at a lower elementary to high initial level. Gender didn’t seem to affect the motor development of the children however age/grade level had a huge impact. Watching the pre-k kids run and jump it was obvious many of them were still at a lower initial level of motor development. Then watching the third and fourth graders sprint across the gym it was obvious they were much more developed. It seems that between pre-k and third grade a lot of maturing goes on it terms of motor development.
The second part of the lab we spent watching the fine motor activities with the group we were assigned to. Most of the activities we were doing didn’t involve many fine motor skills such as drawing, however, when the children had snack time I did watch how they picked up their food as professor Yang recommended. Many used there entire hand even though the cookies were small and used both hands when picking up the cups of milk they were given. Again I only observed the third graders so I’m not sure exactly what the difference was in this skill with the other age group. There seemed to be no difference in gender when the children were performing the fine motor skills.