Gross motor skills are the big movements we make with our bodies to complete a task. These could be activities such as walking, running, jumping, throwing and catching, climbing or riding a bike.

Muscular strength is how strong a child’s muscles are to lift, carry and move themselves or objects. Muscle endurance is how long you can hold an object or posture for.

We need strength and endurance in our muscles before we can learn more complex motor skills like being able to balance or coordinate to copy movements .

This can affect tasks such as sitting upright and participating in sports and leisure activities.

Balance is the ability to maintain a body position whether that be sitting, standing, walking, running, jumping or climbing. Static balance is the ability to hold a stationary position e.g. standing on one leg. Dynamic balance is the ability to keep your balance whilst moving e.g. hopping or jumping.

Coordination is the ability to use different parts of the body in order to perform an action or movement e.g. using both arms and legs to do a star jump or peddling with legs and steering with arms when riding a bike.