Playing with the parachute

Gross motor skills include balance, coordination, lateralization, strength, endurance, etc. Motor skills involve performing body movements and maintaining positions. Like all other skills, motor skills are acquired through practice, and repetition allows them to be refined and developed further. Motor activities and games promote spatial orientation and encourage children and adults alike to expend their energy in a positive way. The same activity often adapts well to children at different stages of development.

Learning to identify written words and understanding their meaning is a major challenge for a 6-year-old child. Reading is a process that begins in first grade and is perfected throughout primary school. More than a visual decoding exercise involving knowledge of the alphabet and the ability to recognize words in general, reading requires that the child develop strategies to understand the meaning of the text. In addition, understanding texts is very important in learning all other school subjects. Producing a text calls upon several skills that must all be used simultaneously but which are gradually acquired during primary school through lessons in writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation.