Fine Motor Skills, Writing Skills and Physical Education Based Assistive Intervention Program in Children at Grade 1

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of physical education based intervention program, aiming to help the development of writing skills of primary school children, on fine motor skill precision and fine motor skill integration. A total of 104 primary school children at grade 1 with at least 2 years of preschool education participated in the study. Children in the experimental group, together with the curriculum studies, did adapted ball control drills three times a week, each 40 minutes, for 10 weeks. Fine motor skill levels of the children were examined with tests of Manual dexterity, Upper limb coordination, Fine motor skill precision and Fine motor skill integration sub-dimensions in the complete form of the Bruininks-Oseretsky test of Motor Proficiency Second Edition (BOT-2). The first measurement was made in the first week of school education, and the last measurements were made after a 10-week intervention period. Data were evaluated by repeated measures analysis of variance and simple effect test. At the end of the intervention, dexterity, upper extremity coordination, fine motor skill sensitivity and fine motor skill integration values improved in the experimental group compared to the control group. This difference between two groups was determined to be statistically significant. As a result, it can be said that physical education based intervention programs for small muscle groups positively affect children's fine motor skills development and thus their interest in writing and schooling.