CSET Practice Test Physical Education

Object Manipulation

By the age of 3 years, most children will have developed
the full range of hand grips and manipulation skills,
which are then only developed further with age, by
increasing in speed and combinations of complexity. 

Many disabled children will be delayed in the acquisition
of these skills; as well as being limited by the range of
hand movements they are able to perform effectively. 

In order for the child to use his hands precisely, he
requires good shoulder and upper arm strength and
stability to hold and position his hands, both close to
and away from his body and at different height levels. 

In order to grip an object with precision the hand muscles
need to be sufficiently developed for the palm and fingers
to move around the object and to sustain and adjust the
grip as necessary. Children with abnormal tone,
neurological conditions and learning difficulties will
experience difficulties with this type of precision task. 

Scissor skills can be difficult for children to learn,
particularly opening the blades ready for cutting. Using
scissors with spring assisted opening blades or with
linked/loop handles may help initially. 

Children's scissors should have rounded tips to the blades
and be made of quality stainless steel and preferably be
able to be used equally effectively by both left and right
handed children. 

Children with limited/no use of one hand may be able to do
some cutting with table top scissors with flat handles to
push down on to produce a cutting action.

Principles of Development 

1. Development proceeds from the head downward. This is
called the cephalocaudle principle. This principle
describes the direction of growth and development.
According to this principle, the child gains control of
the head first, then the arms, and then the legs. Infants
develop control of the head and face movements within the
first two months after birth. In the next few months, they
are able to lift themselves up by using their arms. By 6
to 12 months of age, infants start to gain leg control and
may be able to crawl, stand, or walk. Coordination of arms
always precedes coordination of legs. 

2. Development proceeds from the center of the body
outward. This is the principle of proximodistal
development that also describes the direction of
development. This means that the spinal cord develops
before outer parts of the body. The child's arms develop
before the hands and the hands and feet develop before the
fingers and toes. Finger and toe muscles (used in fine
motor dexterity) are the last to develop in physical
development. 

3. Development depends on maturation and learning.
Maturation refers to the sequential characteristic of
biological growth and development. The biological changes
occur in sequential order and give children new abilities.
Changes in the brain and nervous system account largely
for maturation. These changes in the brain and nervous
system help children to improve in thinking (cognitive)
and motor (physical) skills. Also, children must mature to
a certain point before they can progress to new skills
(Readiness). For example, a four-month-old cannot use
language because the infant's brain has not matured enough
to allow the child to talk. By two years old, the brain
has developed further and with help from others, the child
will have the capacity to say and understand words. Also,
a child can't write or draw until he has developed the
motor control to hold a pencil or crayon. Maturational
patterns are innate, that is, genetically programmed. The
child's environment and the learning that occurs as a
result of the child's experiences largely determine
whether the child will reach optimal development. A
stimulating environment and varied experiences allow a
child to develop to his or her potential. 

4. Development proceeds from the simple (concrete) to the
more complex. Children use their cognitive and language
skills to reason and solve problems. For example, learning
relationships between things (how things are similar), or
classification, is an important ability in cognitive
development. The cognitive process of learning how an
apple and orange are alike begins with the most simplistic
or concrete thought of describing the two. Seeing no
relationship, a preschool child will describe the objects
according to some property of the object, such as color.
Such a response would be, "An apple is red (or green) and
an orange is orange." The first level of thinking about
how objects are alike is to give a description or
functional relationship (both concrete thoughts) between
the two objects. "An apple and orange are round" and "An
apple and orange are alike because you eat them" are
typical responses of three, four and five year olds. As
children develop further in cognitive skills, they are
able to understand a higher and more complex relationship
between objects and things; that is, that an apple and
orange exist in a class called fruit. The child
cognitively is then capable of classification. 

5. Growth and development is a continuous process. As a
child develops, he or she adds to the skills already
acquired and the new skills become the basis for further
achievement and mastery of skills. Most children follow a
similar pattern. Also, one stage of development lays the
foundation for the next stage of development. For example,
in motor development, there is a predictable sequence of
developments that occur before walking. The infant lifts
and turns the head before he or she can turn over. Infants
can move their limbs (arms and legs) before grasping an
object. Mastery of climbing stairs involves increasing
skills from holding on to walking alone. By the age of
four, most children can walk up and down stairs with
alternating feet. As in maturation, in order for children
to write or draw, they must have developed the manual
(hand) control to hold a pencil and crayon. 

6. Growth and development proceed from the general to
specific. In motor development, the infant will be able to
grasp an object with the whole hand before using only the
thumb and forefinger. The infant's first motor movements
are very generalized, undirected, and reflexive, waving
arms or kicking before being able to reach or creep toward
an object. Growth occurs from large muscle movements to
more refined (smaller) muscle movements. 

7. There are individual rates of growth and development.
Each child is different and the rates at which individual
children grow is different. Although the patterns and
sequences for growth and development are usually the same
for all children, the rates at which individual children
reach developmental stages will be different.
Understanding this fact of individual differences in rates
of development should cause us to be careful about using
and relying on age and stage characteristics to describe
or label children. There is a range of ages for any
developmental task to take place. This dismisses the
notion of the "average child". Some children will walk at
ten months while others walk a few months older at
eighteen months of age. Some children are more active
while others are more passive. This does not mean that the
passive child will be less intelligent as an adult. There
is no validity to comparing one child's progress with or
against another child. Rates of development also are not
uniform within an individual child. For example, a child's
intellectual development may progress faster than his
emotional or social development.

An understanding of the principles of development helps us
to plan appropriate activities and stimulating and
enriching experiences for children, and provides a basis
for understanding how to encourage and support young
children's learning.