Psychomotor education

As we have just seen, we must learn to regulate the motor skills and control them in order to be autonomous and have a proper image of our selves, which can also contribute to a positive self-esteem. One of the frameworks in which this regulate can be worked is in schools. Psychomotor education needs persistence, involvement and systematic education taking into account the paces and rhythms of the students. In school children will work with physical attitudes such us muscular resistance, flexibility and agility. For example, learning about voluntary muscular tension can help them to control their tension when are nervous and their emotions at the same time so this education is not only useful to have a significant control of our body but it also helps us to regulate other aspects of our live such as the emotions as I have just explained. 

Other faculties that are worked in psychomotor development are the body equilibrium, the coordination and the independence in terms of availability to move one part of the body without having to move it all which can be properly developed by the age of eight. An example of this independence is produced when the child writes in a paper without having to be doing something else with his body while he is writing. In previous stages that same child was writing while he had his tongue out of his mouth, but when he is mature enough to develop independence he does not have the need to take his tongue from his mouth.

Independence can be as well related with the muscular tone and its progress when we compare a kid who is four years old cutting a paper with scissors with a nine-year-old-kid who is doing the same task. The younger child could be pressing his hand on the table while the other one is cutting the paper whereas the older one is coordinating both hands to cut the paper: one hand is moving the scissors throughout the paper surface while the other is holding the paper to make the cutting process easier. A different example can be given in the field of physical activities. For instance, if a child has to catch a ball and through it to another kid during a Physical Education session he is likely to grab the ball with both hand and throw it like the needs all the strength that his body can proportionate to perform this task, but when a child has a correct and fully developed body scheme, independence, coordination and muscular tone he knows exactly the strength he has to use and throws it with just one hand, the one he dominates better. 

To develop the skills that I have just listed there are several psychomotor activities that can be done in the school that may help children to have a major control of their body:

Activities can be supported by music as we have just seen in some of the activities. In this case, a teacher is singing a song and her students are dancing a choreography they have learned previously. Children need to remember the movements and do them properly. Their movements should be coordinated.

This other video shows a psychomotor class in which students are asked to go through a circuit with different activities to develop in the same activity different skills.