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]. The result from this initial study demonstrated that
Malaysian based traditional games could be efficient in improving the motor
skills of school-age children.