Motor Skills to Help Boys With Cognitive Thinking

Parents of boys know that their children are often full of energy. Directing that energy to develop both gross and fine motor skills helps children learn to think. Movement helps their brains grow and gives them new ideas and ways of looking at the world.

  1. Infancy

    • A 2012 study in the journal, "Infant Behavior and Development," found a strong correlation between motor skills and cognitive development. Audrei F. Miquelote and her team visited babies engaging in motor behavior in their homes at 9 months of age, then again at 15 months of age. The results indicate that parents can help their baby's ability to think by helping him develop motor skills. Soft blocks and other grasping toys help develop fine motor skills. A large room or a supervised outdoor yard are good places to crawl, toddle and play with large balls for gross motor skills. Babies learn to think while working on these early skills.

    Fine Motor Skills

    • Fine motor skills are important to cognitive development. In "Developmentally Appropriate Practice," a March 2010 online assessment by the technical and training system team at the University of Central Florida, teachers of young children are instructed that children are thinking and planning while they learn to cut out shapes and work with clay. The more skilled they become with their hands, the more planning and execution of art projects they are capable of. Therefore, little boys who work on fine motor skills such as drawing, painting and working with clay are also learning to think.

    Structured Movement

    • In her book, "Movement Exploration for Young Children," Molly Sullivan discusses a variety of formal movement activities to do with children. Movement activities teach both motor skills and concepts that are connected to them; hence, children learn to think while in movement class. Imitating the movement of the teacher or another student teaches them new motor skills; balance; and the ability to follow directions, observe and repeat. Movement games that require imitation and repetition are good for the body and the brain.

    Early Adolescence

    • Yong-Ju Kwon and her team of educators, reporting in a study titled "Effect on Development of Proportional Reasoning Skill of Physical Experience
      and Cognitive Abilities Associated with Prefrontal Lobe Activity," worked with 56 eighth-grade boys who were not demonstrating certain types of reasoning skills. They gave them a battery of cognitive tests, then split the group in half. Half the group received tutoring via talking, reading and writing. The other group received manipulative tutoring. The group that utilized motor skills showed remarkable improvement when their ability to reason was retested; the other group did not. It seems that boys become better at thinking when they use motor skills, movement and teaching that features these.

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