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Health, Safety and Motor Skills Development
Health, Safety and Motor Skills Development
Health, Safety and Motor Skills Development (HSM)
As an early childhood educator, you play an important role in developing children’s health and safety awareness and motor skills:Health and Safety Awareness
Eye Care
Spending time outdoors and limiting exposure to digital devices reduces the risk of developing myopia.
Healthy Eating
A balanced diet helps children to stay well-nourished and healthy.
Keeping Physically Active
Physically active children who engage in regular exercise develop fitness and a healthy lifestyle.
Mental Health
Having a positive mindset is critical in helping children manage challenges, adapt to changes and explore new areas in their lives.
Personal Hygiene
Cultivating good personal hygiene habits helps children to protect themselves and be socially responsible in maintaining a clean and healthy environment for the people around them.
Safety Awareness
Children learn to ensure their own and others’ safety at home, in school and at public places
Motor Skills Development
Fine Motor Skills
Fine motor skills involve the coordination and control of the muscles in the hands and are important to help children perform tasks in their daily lives.
Gross Motor Skills
Gross motor skills, involving the large muscles of the body, are essential for daily functioning and participation in physical activities. They include:
- Locomotor skills, which refer to movement of the body from one place to another, such as walking, running, hopping and jumping.
- Non-locomotor skills, which refer to movement of the body in the same place, such as bending, stretching, twisting and swaying.
- Manipulative skills, which refer to the control of parts of the body when managing objects, such as throwing, catching, kicking and hitting.
To support the development of these skills, you can refer to the Movement Framework on the four movement concepts to plan and organise activities. It is important to structure activities from simple to more challenging to accommodate children's readiness and individual needs.
What are the benefits?
The early years play a crucial role in shaping children's lifelong habits and well-being. Here's how a focus on health, safety awareness, and motor skills development can benefit children:
- Promoting Healthy Habits: Introducing and adopting healthy lifestyle habits, such as personal hygiene, regular exercise, healthy eating, good sleep habits, and balanced screen time, lay the foundation for children to embrace healthy habits, leading to active and healthy lifestyles in their youth and adulthood.
- Developing Safety Awareness: Meaningful learning activities help children understand various safety aspects, including road, fire, stranger, and body safety, enabling them to recognise potential dangers and seek help when needed.
- Motor Skills Development: Intentionally planning fun activities supports the development of both gross motor skills (e.g., walking, bending, throwing, and catching a ball) and fine motor skills (e.g., using scissors, fastening buttons), fostering children's confidence in controlling and coordinating their bodies.
Learning Goals and Knowledge, Skills and Dispositions (KSDs) in HSM
Refer to the Educators’ Guide for Health, Safety and Motor Skills Development for more information.
Health, Safety and Motor Skills Development
Learning Goal 1: Develop healthy habits and safety awareness at home, in school and at public places
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1.1 Develop an awareness of the importance of keeping themselves healthy, clean and safe 1.2 Develop an awareness of their role and responsibility in keeping the environment clean and safe 1.3 Demonstrate appropriate behaviours that promote individual and group safety |
Learning Goal 2: Enjoy participating in a variety of physical activities
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2.1 Develop an interest in doing a variety of indoor and outdoor physical activities
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Learning Goal 3: Demonstrate control, coordination and balance in gross motor activities
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3.1 Develop body awareness (i.e., what the body does) 3.2 Develop space awareness (i.e., where the body moves) 3.3 Develop effort awareness (i.e., how the body moves) 3.4 Develop relationship awareness (i.e., with whom the body moves) |
Learning Goal 4: Demonstrate control and coordination in fine motor activities
| Knowledge, Skills and Dispositions (KSD): Provide opportunities for children to… |
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4.1 Manipulate tools and objects with dexterity 4.2 Develop eye-hand coordination in performing fine motor tasks 4.3 Develop appropriate pencil grip |
How can you do it?
Developing Health and Safety Awareness
Using Books and Stories
Engaging books and stories can effectively convey the importance of health and safety to children. You can accompany the books and stories with songs and actions, invite classroom visitors and collaborate with families to reinforce the message at home.
Using Role-Play
Role-play serves as a valuable tool for children to explore and comprehend the world around them while developing useful knowledge and skills. Scenarios such as preparing healthy meals at a restaurant or going for a health check at a dental clinic can effectively promote their health and safety awareness.
Using Routines and Transitions
You can integrate healthy practices into routines and transitions. These authentic contexts provide opportunities to reinforce practices like handwashing, exercising safety while playing at the playground and making healthy choices for snack.
Note:
Screen time impacts children’s health and well-being. Excessive and unhealthy use of screen can affect children’s brain development, language skills and attention span. For example, leaving screens turned on in the background even if children are not watching can distract children and reduce opportunities for children to have quality interactions with others. Also, using screens during mealtimes affects children’s ability to regulate their food intake and develop self-feeding skills.The Early Childhood Development Centres Code of Practice Fourth Edition (2025) states that Licensees must ensure that there is no screen time for infants aged 2 to 18 months old. For children aged 18 months to 6 years old, screen time, if used, must be limited to teaching and learning purposes.
Learn more about healthy use of screen time in:
Developing Motor Skills
Using Explicit Teaching
You can explain and demonstrate how to perform a skill using the four steps below:
- Encourage movement exploration: Provide time, resources and space for children to explore how to execute a motor skill.
- Demonstrate the new skill: Show and explain how to perform the skill.
- Give teaching cues: Provide teaching cues to draw children’s attention to the series of body movements during teacher’s demonstration.
- Provide practice and feedback: Get children to recite the teaching cues and practise the skill to be more familiar with the body movement. Continue to provide feedback and encouragement to help children improve the skill.
Using Games
Games help children to practise or reinforce a specific motor skill while having an enjoyable time. Games also promote opportunities for peer interaction and encourage children to cooperate and develop teamwork.
Do carry out warm-up and cool-down activities to prepare children physically for the activity and help them return to a resting state. This will minimise the risk of injury.
Using Music
Music promotes the development of both gross and fine motor skills, through activities like dances or fingerplay songs. At the same time, it promotes creativity as children explore various movements in an enjoyable manner.
Organising the Learning Environment
To promote health, safety and motor skills development, you can create a stimulating environment with relevant visuals, adequate space and appropriate equipment and resources
- Indoor spaces can be set up for children to learn and practise their fine and gross motor skills. It can also be optimised for children to move around freely and safely.
- Outdoor open spaces provide opportunities for children to engage in gross motor skill activities and movement games. A playground, in particular, supports sensory and motor development as children explore the different equipment.
Here are some ways in which indoors and outdoor spaces can support children’s development of fine and gross motor skills, a list of useful resources and equipment and some tips for you in organising the learning environment.
Monitoring and assessing children's learning and development
You play a crucial role in monitoring and assessing children's learning and development in health, safety, and motor skills. Given that children develop at different rates, observing and documenting their learning and motor skills development is an ongoing process. Do:
- Make short notes, use children’s work, take photographs or record videos to capture their learning experiences
- Analyse the information gathered to track their progress and readiness for the next level of development
Here are some questions you can consider when monitoring and assessing children’s development in health, safety and motor skills.
Resources
- Educators’ Guide for Health, Safety and Motor Skills Development
- Printables for Health Safety and Motor Development
- T&L resources page
- ActiveSG: Fun Start Move Smart and the 5Es Framework
- Grow Well SG
- Resources on Parents Hub
