Movement is a primary need of pre-school children and also a crucial element of holistic development of a child. Motor efficiency is a product of movement and motor skills. Motor skills and also the movement are partially genetically disposed, but with learning and experience we can reach improvement/development.
The purpose of this thesis is find out if we can, with practicing different kind of moving activities, influence faster development of motor skills and with this on improved motor efficiency. Also, we will try to find out which of the following moving activities: judo, sport climbing or organized general physical activity, would be the most appropriate for this.
In this research 88 children were included with average age of 63.2 months (± 1.5 month), 63 of these children represented experimental group, among which 25 children were twice a week involved in sport climbing programme for pre-schoolers. 19 children were twice a week involved in judo programme for pre-schoolers, and 19 children were twice a week involved in general physical activity for pre-schoolers. The remaining 25 children represented a control group and were not involved in any additional moving activity.
For assessment of motor efficiency the motoric test MOT 4–6 was used. Since 1993, this test is standardized for Slovenian 5.5 year old children. Test consists of 18 test items that cover stability, locomotors, manipulation, and fine motor area. Test assessment is built on score system where each item is scored with 0, 1, or 2 points depending on the given criteria. Zero points mean that child does not master the skill, and two points mean that child masters the item. We tested children twice, first at the beginning of the research, and secondly after six months.
We set four hypotheses. The first statement which says that all children will improve motor efficiency for at least 5% till the end of the research, had to be denied, because from the results we can see that 20.5% of all children did not reach this progress. 89% of these children were those who did not participate in any additional moving activity. The second statement claims that children from experimental group will achieve higher progress in motor efficiency than those from the control group. The t-test (t = -10.890, p<0.001) showed significant differences between these two groups, so we confirmed this statement. The third statement, which says that there will be differences in progress between children who were involved in different kinds of moving activities, was refused. The results show that children from all programmes have on average almost the same progress in motor efficiency. Welch test did not show significant differences in progress between different kinds of moving activities. We also refused the fourth statement, which says that children involved in the sport climbing programme would achieve the highest progress. The results show that children involved in sport climbing programme achieved better results only compared to children involved in the control group. Also, there were statistically important differences with these two groups, while differences between sport climbing and judo and also between sport climbing and organized general physical activity were not statistically important.
The result of this research show that children involved in organized moving activities improved their motor efficiency for more than 5%, while children from the control group did not or minimally improved their motor efficiency. From this aspect, including children in organized moving activities, where a coach is aware of specific development of pre-school children and adapts the exercises to their holistic development, is meaningful. Organized moving activity, which is performed twice per week, has a positive influence on child´s motor efficiency and because of holistic development also on social development (communication, co-operation, considering the rules...), cognitive development (understanding the rules, new words...), emotional development (facing with different emotions: happiness, anger, fear...), and on physical development (obtain muscles, lose fat, effects on cardiovascular system...).
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