gross motor skills
Gross Motor Development: Current Exercise Levels Over the span of nine months, a single cell evolves from 46 chromosomes to a fetus to a newborn with a nervous system that contains 100 billion neurons. ... The progression of motor development for an individual from infancy and beyond depends on several surrounding variables such as environment and genetics. Most importantly, the demands of a culture has a significant role in the upbringing of a child, which will in turn have a ripple effect in the evolution and transition of large muscle activities known as gross motor skills. ... As the body develops in cephalocaudal and proximodistal patterns, in which growth occurs from top to bottom and from the center to the extremities, the sequence of gross motor accomplishments is similar. ... The cultural environment of beliefs and values that encircle the infant can affect the rate of advancement of motor development. Although, most infants reach motor milestones during the same period, in some cultures, parents and relatives have the infant partake in activities of stroking, massaging, stretching, and other outlets of physical activities to promote early gross motor skills. ... In the Algonquin culture, babies are strapped to a board during the first year of infancy; there is no delay of gross motor development.