Nursery World - Enabling Environments: Movement Play

Encouraging children to use their bodies in any way they want stimulates their physical and brain development and has a noticeable beneficial effect on behaviour, writes Annette Rawstrone

Children crawling over and under the tables, playing tug of war with stretchy material, doing forward rolls on mats, dancing with ribbons, hanging upside down on A-frames in the small outdoor area and spinning each other around – these are typical activities for the children at 1a Children’s Centre in Camden, London, who are encouraged to use all parts of their bodies in order to stimulate their physical and brain development (See ‘For Mind and Body’, Nursery World, 7 September 2015).

Staff were left amazed at how concentrating on the repetition of simple movements benefited the children, including improved eye contact, balance and motor skills, when they became part of a pilot study with developmental movement therapist Bette Lamont.

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