CASE OF STUDY

My case of study was based on a preschooler Salvadorian girl whose full name is Astrid Nicolle Torres Alvarado. She is four years old and she lives with her parents and a big sister who is ten years old. Now, talking about her school life, she has started  kindergarten in this year in a public school where she only has two classmates and a teacher. In addition, it is important to mention that Nicolle is left handed. The purpose of my research was to discover if fine and gross motor skills development of a Salvadorian child is at the same rate of American children’s motor skills development during the early childhood based on John Shamrock’s book. Moreover, the research question that I formulated before the development of the research was about how a Salvadorian child’s fine and gross motor skills development is similar to American children motor skills development. Next, I will provide more details about the whole process of my case of study.

Before recording the case of study

Firstly, I look information about physical development during early childhood. Then, I started to classify the information that I found, but I faced with a problem that the majority of the information that I found on internet was not very valid. Thus, I decided to base my research on the book “Children” written by John Santrock who is a successful psychologist that has developed many researches on children’s development. Next, I chose the physical activities that according to Santrock are the ones that indicate the fine and gross motor skills development, and I look for the instruments that I was going to need in order to make the preschooler girl performance those activities. Finally, I asked the child’s father (who is my uncle) if he could borrow me his daughter, and he agreed. Thus, I looked for the camera and I started to record the preschooler.  

During recording the case of study

First, I asked the preschooler whose name is Nicolle, to do all the activities that I prepared in order to evaluate her fine and gross motor skills. I started to observe her fine motor skill by using materials such as blocks, drawings, fat crayons, beads, and a pencil. Some of the activities I asked her to perform were to build a tower and a bridge with blocks, pour to different containers, draw a person, and string beads. Then, I asked her to perform the activities designed to evaluate her gross motor skill such as bounce a ball, jump, hop in one foot, and catch and throw a 6 inch ball.     

After recording the case of study

Once I had recorder the child, I started to classify the higher quality videos, and I organized them in an orderly way. While I was editing the short videos by using the movie maker program, I was recording my voice in order to narrate the video and to talk about the contrast between theory and reality. It was very hard to edit the video and to synchronize the time of my voice recording with it because I spend a whole day editing this video, but in the end all the effort was worth!

Now, talking about my findings and conclusions on this preschooler, Firstly I could realize that the development of gross and fine motor skills of a Salvadorian child is similar to the rate of American children’s gross and fine motor skills development due to the fact that the girl was able to perform accurately all the physical activities that American children can do at the age of four years according to Shamrock’s book. Second, I could find out that the girl performed very well all those physical activities such as jump in a foot, build a tower with blocks, string beads, draw a person, and color drawings because of the stimulation that she had received. Her mother said that since the girl was almost two years old, she started to try to color the coloring books of her big sister, and she really loves to spend her free time by drawing and coloring. Finally, I discovered that her left handedness is not a problem because in the end she was able to perform all the tasks, even though, she did them in different ways. However, according to pediatricians, the handedness does not affect the gross and fine motor skills development of children. They say that the only physical difference between left handers and right handers is that the muscles that are stimulated more are going to experiment the Hypertrophy. It means that if a person is left handed, the muscles of his or her left hand are going to increase in volume more than his or her right hand.

References:

Santrock,John W.Children. pp.254-359. Mc Graw Hill.USA,2010.