Psychomotricity and Infant Education

The aims of this chapter is to offer education professionals an assessment proposal that will help them to know the motor skills of children from 3 to 5 years old. The authors also propose to offer a methodological alternative for the creation of psychomotor intervention plans. Committed to the importance of psychomotor development for the global development of the human being, they offer an evaluation proposal using the McCarthy Aptitude and Psychomotor Skills (7th edition) as a tool. This work begins by making a chronological review of the concept of psychomotor skill and its importance in child development. It is supported by the evolutionary, psychopedagogical, psychoanalytic, and neuropsychiatric theories that have shown this aspect throughout the times, and highlighting the aptitudes and stages of motor development that children under 3, 4, and 5 years old must reach. The authors hope to provide practical knowledge that will contribute to the optimization of educational work and benefiting children´s development.

Policies and Practices to Promote Physical Activity

This chapter presents a pilot study that sought to examine the practices and policies that can encourage children's physical activity in preschool settings located at Viana do Castelo, Portugal. The Environment and Policy Assessment and Observation instrument was used to measure the quality of the physical activity environment. The findings show that preschool settings present multiple limitations that may hinder children's physical activity and motor development. It should also be noted that policies are practically non-existent as there is a clear absence of physical activity content within the guiding documents in preschool education contexts. Further, there were no education opportunities provided to program staff. It is paramount to engage policymakers and other stakeholders in discussions that provide quality environments to encourage physical activity among preschool children.

Early Childhood Teacher Professional Development in Physical Education and Its Impact on Preschooler Motor Development

Physical education in early years makes a unique contribution to the learning experience of children and support physical, cognitive, and social development. Teacher plays an essential role, but early childhood teacher professional development remains unclear. Literature review has shown that it is influenced by individual and social factors. Teacher professional development may have an impact on student motor development in this stage. The objectives of this chapter were to study early childhood teachers' professional development in PE and to analyze the influence and impact of early childhood teachers' professional development on their students' motor development. This chapter describes the results and conclusions of two different studies which have been developed. They highlighted that the variables that affect professional development are initial training and professional development, external perception of physical education, and personal perspective. Furthermore, findings have revealed that these three variables condition their students' motor development most.

Didactic Proposal for Physical Education for Three-Year Olds in Early Childhood Education

Throughout this chapter the authors are going to present a didactic proposal, called “Lights, Camera, and Action” that is arranged to be carried out with three-year-old boys and girls and consists of five sessions, which will be spread over 15 days, and physical activity will be performed twice a week. In this proposal, topics like the typical in the performing arts such as circus, theater, dance, and music are explored. In this playful and motivating way, physical activity will be promoted, through our own content such as jumps, turns, and different types of balance. The didactic proposal contains objectives, competences, and contents, regulated by the Curriculum Decree 67/2007 establishing Early Childhood Education in the Autonomous Community of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain).

The Cascading Effects of Gross Motor Development and the Impact of Intervention in Early Childhood

Today's preschoolers are facing a secular decline with their motor development. Intervention, via physical education in preschool, can be effective to remediate gross motor delays. Teachers need ongoing support in order to intervene. If teachers intervene, children may be placed onto a positive developmental trajectory towards lifespan health. Children's gains in gross motor can transcend into other domains of development. Thus, the author urges early childhood policymakers to strongly consider hiring a licensed physical educator to implement daily physical education to preschoolers to maximize positive developmental trajectories of health. If these policy changes do not occur, children may continue on their secular decline with deleterious consequences across multiple developmental domains and school readiness.

Improvement of Laterality Through the ABN Method in a Learning Enviroment in Early Education

This chapter aims to shed light on the relationship between the development of laterality and the learning of mathematics in early childhood education using the ABN method. Thus, the authors present an experience developed with 24 children of 4 and 5 years old from several sessions of physical education where laterality and mathematics were worked on in the framework of a project developed in the classroom. The neuropsychological laterality test and a psychomotor table with values referred exclusively to manual and foot laterality, and indicators referred to the ABN method were used as evaluation instruments. The results obtained indicate that students with homogeneous right- or left-handed laterality obtain better results, as well as those with crossed laterality, since they have defined their manual and foot dominance. However, students with undefined laterality obtain worse results, even showing a lateral tendency towards the use of the right side of the body.

Pedagogical Proposals for the Sensory and Motor Stimulation of Children From 0 to 2 Years Old

This proposal encompasses in a practical and viable way a collection of activities to contribute to the early development of children's perceptive capacities through sensory stimulation and psychomotor education. These activities have been adjusted to the reality of the school and the evolution and personal features of children from 0 to 2 years old. Moreover, recommendations and strategies to grant an inclusive early education derived from the experience of putting them into practice have been included. The goal, in every case, will be the creation of fun learning situations where the infants feel free to do, touch, feel, express, make mistakes, and try things over and over again.

Move Your Brain!

Active breaks have received great attention both among teachers and researchers and are used by those who pursuit to take advantage of all its benefits. Because of these benefits, many teachers or schools have incorporated active breaks into their daily classroom routines. However, to the authors' knowledge, there is not any program aimed entirely at preschool age. Also, the type of activities proposed in these programs are mostly mechanic with low cognitive engagement while some authors argue that cognitively engaging physical activity is more beneficial for cognitive and academic performance than mechanic activities. For these reasons, this chapter proposes a new active break program aimed at preschool children. This program, entitled “Move Your Brain,” will be composed of physical activities with inherent cognitive demands to challenge the children's brains.

Importance of Active Breaks in Early Childhood Education

The physical activity has been shown to be beneficial to indicators of physical, mental, and psychosocial health in child and adolescent populations. In this way, there is a growing interest in the effect of physical activity on cognitive outcomes, because there are some evidences about the influence of physical activity and his efficacious and low-cost health behavior on cognitive and brain development in children and adolescents. However, the effects of regular physical activity on cognitive performance in children have been inconsistent in the literature and not enough study in childhood education. For this reason, the aim of this chapter will be focused in many aspects to take into account to create a proposal to increase the physical activity levels to improve the attentional and concentration levels in children from 3 to 6 years old.

Formation of Practical Experience With Teachers of Physical Education in the Room of Psychomotricity in Childish Education

The main objective of this research is the design of a training program for teachers of education physics in the institution of psychomotor circuits within the psychomotor room in the Educational Center Santa Rosa School (Venezuela) using a methodology based on participatory action research capable of handling the most elementary and obvious didactic situations determined and delimited by the actors themselves based on the implementation of the cycle model—reflection-practice-observation-execution—which transforms the teachers in protagonist and integrates the figure of the educational advisor in the process of formation. The results show the change from a poorly supported pedagogical practice to an enriched one where the creation of a method of systematization of information stands out, which made his work more effective due to the creation of a series of formats for evaluation and observation relevant to the population and its performance.