The Effect of Traditional Games Intervention Programme in the Enhancement School-age Children’s Motor Skills: A preliminary study

Abstract

The purpose of the current study is to explore the effectiveness of the traditional games intervention programme in the enhancement of form one school-age children’s motor skills. The quasi-experiment method is applied. A total number of 40 Malaysian children with ages ranging from 12 – 14 were randomly selected for the study, [boys (n=20) and girls (n=20)]. The children went through the traditional games intervention which consisted of performing selected traditional games for 60 minutes, three times weekly for a period of eight weeks. Motor fitness performance tests were conducted three times (pre, mid, and post-test) which included 30-meter sprint test, 505 agility test, modified Bass test for dynamic balance and Nelson reaction times test. The data were collected and analysed using MANOVA repeated measurement. The results show that traditional games intervention was effective in the improvement of motor performance [F (8, 29) = 1704.16, p < .05]. Follow-up tests also show that the traditional games intervention is a factor [F (12,105) =1.99, p < .05] to agility [F (3,36) = .50, p >.05], reaction time [F (3,36) = .51, p >.05], speed [F (3,36) = 3.64, p <.05] and balance [F (3,36) = .02, p > .05]. The result from this initial study demonstrated that Malaysian based traditional games could be efficient in improving the motor skills of school-age children.