Fun activities to help your child develop locomotor skills

All of human physical activity can be broken down into two categories: Locomotor skills and non-locomotor skills. A locomotor skill is a physical action that propels an individual from one place to another, whereas non-locomotor skills are fundamental body movements that do not incorporate travelling. Non-locomotor skills involve movements like bending, bouncing, pushing, rocking, stretching, twisting, turning, etc. Locomotor skills involve actions like walking, running, jumping, marching, skipping, galloping etc. These skills help to refine a child's gross motor abilities. The more often locomotor skills are exercised, the greater the child's ability to fine tune the movement of each skill. 

When do locomotor skills start developing? 
The first locomotor skill children learn is walking which happens around the age of one. They typically take another year to start running and hopping. More complex skills of galloping, skipping, sliding, and leaping are learned at about age three. Each of these skills helps in providing children with greater agility, increased confidence and independence when it comes to their ability to move around their environment and the wider world. 

Fun activities 
If your children’s physical development is a cause for concern or worry, there are some activities at home that can help develop these skills. Playing games with children is the easiest way to engage them in activities that will help them hone their locomotor skills. Different games and activities can help children build focus on building each skill. 

• Take your children out to the backyard or to a local park and encourage them to play racing games with their siblings or friends, or even parents. Play variations of the game with categories speed-walking and jogging and sprinting. 
• Motivate your kids to join sports that involve a lot of running like football and basketball. 
• Allow your children to jump around the house where it is safe for them to do so. Buy them a mini trampoline, buy them a jump rope, tape up a target height on a wall and make a game out of who can jump the highest. 
• Plat rhythm games and sing show tunes to help your child learn skipping. Let them use the wall as support and skip along to the beat in the step-hop pattern. 
• Galloping comes under the more complex locomotor skills. Help them imagine what it’s like to ride a horse. Use a hula hoop to help stimulate the similar movement of hips when galloping. Encourage them to combine this with hopping and soon enough, your child will learn how to gallop.