Browsing by Subject "Karkeamotoriset taidot"

Aims. The aim of this master’s thesis was to examine the association between poor gross motor skills, fine motor skills and early mathematical skills in 4-years-old-children. Previous research has shown that both gross and fine motor skills are associated with academic performance at school age, especially in mathematics, but research is still limited for under school age children. This study provides additional information on how poor gross motor skills are associated with fine motor skills and early mathematical skills before school age. Methods. This study was conducted using quantitative methods. IMB SPSS Statistics 27 was used for the data analysis. The data of this thesis was obtained from the Toimi ja opi -study and included 188 Finnish children aged four years in 2019. The research data was test results of the FMS (fundamental motor skills) test, fine motor skills tests and the Finnish Early Numeracy Test (Lukukäsitetesti). Gross motor skills were measured using the FMS (TGMD-3, KTK, MABC) -test. Fine motor skills were measured with three fine motor skills (LENE, BAS, WISC-3) tests. Early mathematical skills were measured using the Finnish Early Numeracy Test, that is based on number sequence skills and relational skills. In the results, means were examined with correlations and one-way analysis of variance. The association and relationship between the FMS and the Finnish Early Numeracy Test were analysed with Pearson correlation coefficients and the one-way ANOVA. Results and conclusions. The results of this master's thesis showed a statistically significant correlations between gross motor skills, fine motor skills and early mathematical skills. The results showed a statistically significant difference between poor gross motor skills and normally developing gross motor skills in the mean scores of the fine motor skills test and the Finnish Early Numeracy Test. The lower the score the child scored on the gross motor skills test, the lower the scores were on the fine motor skills test and early mathematical skills test. Results showed that the association between these skills can be seen already before school-age. Results underline the notion that in early childhood education should pay attention to identify the poor performance in motor skills in children and when they are observed, need the possible other difficulties be surveyed, so the support can be started at early stage. Early support can prevent the later difficulties in learning and development.