Psychomotor skills are a set of skills that we are continually developing and improving from birth. They involve the use of other skills necessary for the proper development of gross motor skills (learning to walk, sit without falling...) and fine motor skills (grasping an object, coloring within the lines...), sensory (responding to sounds) , affective-emotional (imitation) and cognitive, and language development (words that are pronounced correctly). There are many pathologies that present with psychomotor delay, which translates into motor, cognitive and affective difficulties. For example, children with developmental disorders such as autism, mental retardation or brain damage, as well as dyslexia, ADHD or cancer may have problems with psychomotor development. Luckily, there are many games and mental exercises that can help improve psychometric skills in children , which will be helpful whether your child is struggling or not.

What aspects of psychomotor skills will you train with these games?

• Coordination
• fine motor skills
• Hand-eye coordination
• Visual-spatial integration

We leave you with some exercises/games that can help improve your child's psychometric skills. In case your little one is not a game lover, we recommend you visit our article where you can learn some techniques and tips that can help you integrate your child into the game .

• Play with clay. Squeezing, stretching and pulling the clay will help develop the muscles used in fine motor skills. Making shapes and figures uses creativity. Suggest creating different shapes, you can go by categories: animals, food, things found in nature… or you can let your child surprise you! You can also put things in the clay, such as buttons, straws, beans, pasta, etc. and then take them out.
• Make mazes. Start with the simplest ones and work up to the most difficult ones. If you want to make a simple maze and make it more difficult, have them complete it in their head before drawing it.
• Play with geometric shapes. Recognize geometric shapes as templates so that the child can draw.
• Cut. Use safety scissors to cut out shapes. Start with simple shapes and play with them when you're done!
• Puzzles: also called “jigsaw puzzles” not only improve our motor skills, but also help improve our executive functions. Play simple puzzles that are appropriate for your child, and get increasingly more difficult as your child's skills improve.
• Play dress up. This is fun and your child will have a blast! Putting on and taking off different clothes with different types of buttons (large, small, oval...), Velcro and zippers will help develop fine motor skills.
• Shoot hoops. I grabbed a trash can and shot some hoops with your son. Use different heights (sitting on the couch, standing, standing on a chair...), different distances and balls with different weights (paper balls, large rubber balls, small handball balls...)
• Make bracelets In addition to being fashionable, they will be a great gift for moms, aunts, grandmothers... Use buttons, beads and cords.