Preschool Gross Motor Activities
and School Readiness

Preschool gross motor activities should be an important part of your child's routine, as they help build the foundation skills needed for learning.

Many parents think that having good gross motor skills can enable a child to excel at sports. This is only part of the benefit!

Developing your child's gross motor skills can do so much more than that – they can influence your child’s ability to write well, to read well and even to concentrate in the classroom.

Let's take a look at some of the skills your child will need in formal school, and see how preschool gross motor activities can help your child develop each skill!

Being Able To Sit At A Desk To Work

Taking part in gross motor activities can help your child develop the physical endurance needed to sit at a desk for extended periods of time. This may also help your child's ability to concentrate.

Activities that develop the core muscles can help your child to sit upright and not slouch at the desk or on the mat.


child writing

Listening To The Teacher And Following Instructions

Taking part in sports, games, and other preschool gross motor activities, with or without other children, can help your child to learn to listen and to follow instructions.

These are vital skills for any child to have in the classroom.

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Copying Work From The Board

Copying work from the blackboard requires your child to visually focus on the work on the board, and transfer focus from near to far and back again.

These functional visual skills are often enhanced by participation in gross motor activities, especially ball games.


Scissor Cutting, Drawing and Coloring Skills

In order to use the small muscles of the hands to hold a pencil or manipulate scissors, the large muscles of the arms, shoulder and trunk need to be strong and stable.

Gross motor activities that target the core muscles and the shoulder muscles can help develop this strength and stability.

scissor cutting activity

Doing gross motor tasks that involve bilateral coordination may also help your child to coordinate the hands to use scissors and other stationery well.

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Developing Good Handwriting Skills

In order to master handwriting, your child needs to be able to use the hands and eyes well together, a skill called visual-motor integration.This means that the eyes guide the hands in controlling the pencil so that the correct shapes and lines can be made to create the letters.

Developing eye-hand coordination through gross motor games can help your child master visual-motor integration.


Correctly Spacing Written Work On The Page

In order for your child to correctly space out the written work on the page, crossing the midline and directionality skills need to be well established, as well as spatial perception and planning skills.

Giving your preschool child lots of gross motor opportunities can help your child develop these skills while moving around, changing direction, and planning how to use equipment.

Playing at the park can work on all these areas! You can also try my ideas for including midline crossing in gross motor activities.

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Learning To Read

Your child needs good visual tracking and focusing skills in order to read well.

Ball games, bean bag games and games requiring eye-hand coordination can help these skills to develop.


children reading

Reinforcing Basic Math Skills

Many preschool gross motor activities involve rhythmical counting, which can help your child internalize number sequences. Encourage your child to count jumps and throws, or assign them a certain number to do - it takes a lot of control to stop at jump number 10 on a trampoline!

You can also include number recognition in games such as hopscotch and target tossing. Introduce skip counting in 2's and 10's as your child gets older.

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Ideas for Preschool Gross Motor Activities

Although many of the activities on my site are geared to children in kindergarten and first grade, most of them can easily be used by preschoolers as they develop their skills.

Check out these free gross motor pages for some fun gross motor activities you can do at home with your child!


I hope you found this page helpful and inspiring!

If you are looking for gross motor resources that are accessible and printable, please do check out my printable gross motor resources - for the price of a couple of coffees, you will have a wealth of easy activities at your fingertips!

Pin this page: The importance of preschool gross motor activities in getting your child ready for school!

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Bilateral Activities
Hand-Eye Coordination Info and Activities
Crossing Midline Activities
Bean Bag Games

Free Printable Gross Motor Download!

This free printable download helps you to understand how gross motor skills can have an impact on your child in the classroom.

It is part of a set of 3 handouts that I compiled to help parents understand how gross motor, fine motor and visual perception skills can affect your child's learning.

You will get all 3 handouts absolutely free when you sign up for my newsletter!

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Check out these gross motor posts by fellow therapists!

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