What ability must an infant have as a foundation for gross motor skill development?

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Gross Motor Skills

Gross motor skills involve using large muscles in a coordinated way. Learn about these important skills and how you can help further develop them in your child.

Gross motor skills are foundational skills that involve bigger movements using large muscle groups – arms, legs, feet, and trunks – to move the body. With practice, children learn to develop and use gross motor skills so they can move in their world with balance, coordination, ease, and confidence!

Examples of gross motor skills include sitting, crawling, running, jumping, throwing a ball, and climbing stairs. Even the first time a baby lifts his head is an example of a gross motor skill.

There are lots of fun and simple activities you can do with your child to help develop gross motor skills. These include:

• Playing active games together, such as jumping rope, hopscotch, tag, and hide-and-seek.

• Helping your child go down slides, climb ladders, or pump legs on the swing at a playground.

• Teaching your child to toss, catch, and kick using balls of different sizes.

• Helping your toddler build a fort by draping a blanket over a couple of chairs, or stacking empty cardboard boxes (using larger ones for tunnels!).

• Making an age-appropriate obstacle course. With toddlers, lay pillows, cushions, and blankets in small stacks on the floor and encourage them to crawl over the “hills.” For preschoolers, lay a hula hoop on the ground for them to jump into, or make a ball toss with an empty basket or box.

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Gross Motor development involves the larger, stronger muscle groups of the body. In early childhood, it is the development of these muscles that enable a baby to hold their head up, sit, crawl and eventually walk, run and skip.

Between the ages 3 – 6 months, your child should:

• Randomly move arms and legs
• Put hands near eyes and touch mouth
• Be able to lift their head up when on stomach
• Be able to put weight on arms when on stomach
• Move head from side to side while lying on back
• Hold head steady when held in sitting position
• Sit with little support at the waist

• Turn from back to side and tries to roll over
• Reach out for toys, using left or right hand and puts toys in mouth
• When on stomach, is able to keep head up, putting weight on arms and turn head from side to side
• Stand when held, bend knees and support weight with legs
• Touch knees and feet with hands when lying on back

Between the ages of 6 – 9 months, your child should:

• Start rolling back to front and visa versa
• Be able to sit by themself

• Be able to pivot and creep on stomach
• Start standing stiff legged while holding onto furniture

Between the ages of 9 – 12 months, your child should:

• Be able to crawl over and around objects
• Start to cruise around furniture
• Move from sitting to lying down

• Pull to stand while holding onto furniture
• Walk with 2 hands held

Red Flags for Gross Motor Development (0-12 months)

If you notice or are concerned about some of the following things about your baby, you may want to talk to your physician or another health professional.

• Baby’s head is flat
• Baby doesn’t turn their head to both sides
• Baby feels stiff
• Baby is not meeting developmental milestones

• Baby uses one side of their body more than the other
• Baby’s skills are regressing
• Something appears wrong with baby’s legs and/or feet

If you have concerns about your child at any age, please feel free to contact us to speak to a professional. You can also make a referral to our centre at anytime.

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