A teacher plans activities such as building blocks, drawing, and cycling for…
2026
A teacher plans activities such as building blocks, drawing, and cycling for her students. According to developmental patterns, what is the main benefit of including this combination of tasks?
Answer: C. They support both gross and fine motor development — Concept — Motor development is described along two strands. Gross motor skills use the large muscles of the trunk, legs and arms to control posture, balance…
- A.
They solely encourage social interaction among children
- B.
They mainly develop language and communication skills
- C.
They support both gross and fine motor development
- D.
They only improve children's academic readiness
Attempted by 13 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
Concept — Motor development is described along two strands. Gross motor skills use the large muscles of the trunk, legs and arms to control posture, balance and locomotion, while fine motor skills use the small muscles of the hands and fingers for grasping, manipulating and precision work. Development follows the cephalocaudal pattern (head downwards) and the proximodistal pattern (from the centre of the body outwards), so control of the large muscles emerges before and underpins refined hand control. A well-planned early-childhood programme therefore deliberately draws tasks from both strands instead of exercising only one.
Application — Map each planned activity to the muscle groups it recruits:
Activity | Muscles chiefly recruited | Motor strand |
|---|---|---|
Building blocks | Fingers and hands for grasping, stacking and controlled release | Fine motor |
Drawing | Fingers, wrist and hand for crayon grip and hand-eye coordination | Fine motor |
Cycling | Legs, trunk and postural muscles for pedalling, steering and balance | Gross motor |
Two of the three tasks train the small muscles and one trains the large muscles, so the set spans both strands at once. The main benefit of planning this combination is that it supports both gross and fine motor development.
Cross-check — Why the other benefits do not describe what links these three tasks:
Encouraging social interaction: block play, drawing and cycling can each be carried out by a child working alone, so peer interaction depends on how the teacher groups the class rather than on the tasks themselves.
Developing language and communication: none of the three tasks requires the child to produce or interpret speech; vocabulary and expression are built through storytelling, conversation and rhyme activities.
Improving academic readiness: drawing does build the pre-writing control a child later needs, but stacking blocks and riding a cycle are not letter, number or classroom-routine tasks, so readiness is at most a partial by-product.
The qualifiers "solely", "mainly" and "only" each confine the benefit to a single domain, whereas the point of pairing manipulative tasks with a whole-body task is that two motor strands are exercised together.