Australasian Journal of Early Childhood

The children in this study were from families of lowsocioeconomic position, and their level of fundamentalmovement skills was significantly below the referencelevels on the clinical test used. This means the childrenwere unable to perform skills such as throwing, kicking,jumping or hopping at the level expected for their ageand gender. These results are consistent with previousstudies which showed delays in fundamental movementskill acquisition in children from disadvantaged families.Children who lack the necessary fundamental movementskills and active play experiences have been shown tohave negative experiences such as stigmatisation andteasing, and low confidence which may contributeto a lifetime of avoidance of physical activity (Locke,1996; Poulsen & Ziviani, 2004). Achieving competencein fundamental movement skills before commencingschool is recognised as important so that children feelconfident, socially accepted, and maintain a positiveattitude towards physical activity throughout life(Boreham & Riddoch, 2001).The intervention tested in this pilot study involvedweekly modelling of activities to be performed daily todevelop a range of fundamental movement skills over afive-month period. The program was designed to be fun,developmentally appropriate and meaningful for childrenaged less than five years. Such programs have been foundto be more successful than skill-training interventions(Akbari et al., 2009; Apache, 2005). Post-interventionthe children’s level of fundamental movement skills hadincreased to the age-appropriate level. These results areof clinical significance for children’s development andhighlight that this may be a critical time for intervention.It is known that preschool children develop rapidly (Cech& Martin, 2005) with 90 per cent of the growth of thebrain occurring by three years of age (Sunderland, 2007).Importantly, the skills that improved post-interventionwere those targeted by the intervention activities. Forexample, nearly 70 per cent of the active play activitieswere locomotive-based (running, jumping, skipping etc.)and improvements in the children’s locomotive subtestscores were greater than for object manipulation andstationary subtest scores.The early childhood workers identified a number ofimprovements to the intervention program to make itmore suitable for the families they worked with. Thesebroadly fell into three areas: reducing the repetition ofplay activities, making adaptations to accommodatefewer participants, and clarifying instructions. Each ofthese is explained in more detail below.1. Workers recommended reducing the repetition ofthe ‘active play’ activities. This finding highlights theneed to convey to those implementing the programthe important and deliberately repetitious natureof the activities, as it is known that it can take aconsiderable number of trials to master a single skill(NSW DET, 2008). The acquisition of fundamentalmovement skills requires a child to be involved infrequent repetition of play activities as it can takehundreds of attempts to master a single skill (NSWDET, 2008).2. There was a need to make adaptations toaccommodate fewer participants. A number of theplay activities in the intervention program requirethree or more participants. This was an issue, as atleast one-third of the families involved were singleparentfamilies. Having a deeper understandingof the target group for the intervention nowallows refinement of the intervention to includeadaptations or alternatives for the activities wherethere are fewer than three people available.3. Clarifying instructions was recommended by theGlastonbury workers, as they felt a number oftheir families had difficulty understanding some ofthe instructions. For this reason, the Glastonburyworkers found demonstrating or modelling the playactivities the most effective delivery method as itshowed parents how to play with their children.This is consistent with a previous interventionstudy where the use of role-plays, videotapes toshow specific examples of procedures, handoutsadapted to parents’ reading levels, and the use ofmodelling were found to be effective (Hancock,Kaiser & Delaney, 2002).Strengths and limitationsThe strength of this study is the involvement offamilies of significant socioeconomic disadvantageand the application of the intervention under realworldconditions. However, the limitations includethe small sample size and lack of a control group. Alarger randomised controlled trial will be needed to fullytest the effectiveness of the intervention. A furtherlimitation is that the PDMS-2 was norm-referenced ona sample of American children and there are no knownstudies to determine if the norms of Australian childrencoincide with those of the PDMS-2. It may be that thisstudy underestimates the level of delay in fundamentalmotor skill acquisition.ConclusionDevelopmental delay in fundamental movementskills is a public health concern that can be observedvery early in a child’s life. Addressing this issue isimportant for increased competence and enjoymentand promoting active lifestyles for children. This pilotstudy has shown that a community-based interventiondelivered by early childhood workers is effective.Importantly, the improved skill development potentiallyincreases children’s engagement in physical activity,Vo l u m e 3 6 N u m b e r 3 S e p t e m b e r 2 011 71