A healthy mind and body is just a hop, skip and jump away, as Lena Engel demonstrates with these exercises that will encourage children to develop muscle control
Early learning goal Children should learn to move with confidence, imagination and in safety. They should move with control and co-ordination (Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage, p104 and p106)
Motion is the most natural activity for babies and young children. It is through moving that they become familiar with their environment and learn to control their bodies. Space and the freedom to use it should be provided both indoors and outside to encourage children to develop control of the muscles in their arms and legs.
Practising these large motor skills will in turn help develop the finer control of the muscles in hands and fingers that is needed for drawing, writing and sewing. Moving is also essential to strengthen a child's bones, to improve blood circulation and to ensure that internal organs function well.
Regular opportunities to exercise and move around help maintain the balance of a healthy mind and body. Children and adults need to acknowledge that regular exercise should form part of everyone's daily routine. As moving for young children comes naturally, the early years practitioner needs to ensure that positive experiences are offered so that children are effectively challenged according to their individual needs and skills. Use the 'stepping stones' to inform your planning and determine the sorts of activities and resources you may wish to provide.
Moving and transporting
Young children like to transport paraphernalia from one place to another. It may be that they want to make a structure using large building blocks or that they like pushing a full pram or trolley around. The act of picking up objects and then walking with them from one location to another is challenging because it involves using their legs to direct the body as well as arms that grasp and balance the object. Plan a number of activities throughout the day that enable children to enjoy developing these skills.
Good practice
- Encourage children to pick up small chairs when they need to place them around tables for an activity or to eat a meal, or when they want to set them in line to form a bus or a train during role play.
- Remind them always to hold the chairs safely. They should grasp the chair from the side with one hand clutching the front of the seat, and the other supporting the chair back. In this way, if they trip and fall forward, it is unlikely to cause injury.
- Ensure that children help tidy up at the end of each session by putting the toys or resources away where they belong. An organised environment is always easier to maintain and enables children to play their full part in looking after it. Provide low shelves to stack small and large boxes, and units in which gliding trays can be stored.
- Create opportunities for children to set the tables for lunch or tea and give them responsibilities that they can feel proud to fulfil, such as collecting and placing tablemats, crockery and cutlery. Also encourage children to serve themselves food and scrape and stack dishes on a trolley once they have finished. These domestic tasks will help children to develop very important personal skills and increase their self-esteem.
- Provide large cardboard boxes that can be used for imaginative play both indoors and outside. Children will build towers or use them as pretend parcels that can be transported around on trucks.
- Provide dolls, teddies, prams and buggies that all children will enjoy pushing around in pretend play.
Stopping and starting
As children become more confident, they enjoy physical challenges that involve following instructions. At this stage they can learn about stopping and starting, and are able to learn to move in a variety of ways which greater co-ordination makes possible.
Good practice
- Create opportunities for children to practise skills indoors and outdoors, ensuring that the surface on which they move is suitable.
- They can learn to slither like snakes, crawl on all fours like cats and dogs, hop forwards like frogs or rabbits, glide like birds in flight and jump like kangaroos.
- Use simple guidelines for moving that can be easily understood; for instance, display traffic lights or red and green flags that indicate when they are expected to stop and start. Use the amber signal to initiate a change of movement.
- Organise running games outdoors and encourage children to exert greater control of their bodies as they run fast or slow.
- Plan races in which children can compete with their friends if they want to. Give children the chance to excel in physical development and they are more likely to develop the confidence, endurance and concentration they will need to learn more intense fine motor skills such as drawing and writing.
Dancing
By this stage, children are not only more skilled in co-ordinating their limbs, they are also more able to move in co-operation with their peers. Dance provides a very suitable art form to encourage children to learn about rhythm and beat. Pre-recorded music should be employed to stimulate expressive and imaginative movement.
Good practice
- Use a range of music from around the world. Encourage children to interpret the different beats and to move their bodies in imaginative and expressive ways.
- Provide simple props that will inspire children to dance rhythmically to the music; for instance, use anklets with bells to accompany Indian music, and tie chiffon scarves to children's wrists to accompany Chinese music.
- Encourage children to learn simple, repeated steps and ask them to perform in unison as they move to music. For instance, they can dance in a circle and move towards the centre and then move out again. Alternatively, they can follow each other in a line and zigzag across the space.
Organising and directing
Children will take increasing pride in showing off all the physical skills they have learned. They should be encouraged to describe the directions where they are moving. They will enjoy planning their own exercise routine and constructing their own assault course.
Good practice
- Provide a large space indoors or outside where children can build an obstacle course.
- Ensure that children are dressed suitably according to the chosen space. Indoors it may be wise for them to go barefoot with a minimum of clothes. Outside they should wear sensible shoes or trainers, and clothes that fit properly.
- Provide a good selection of equipment ranging from hoops, stepping- stone mats and bollards to planks, wooden bricks and milk crates.
- Initiate the activity by encouraging the children to name the actions they would like to perform on the course. Support the use of the correct terms to describe the directions they intend to move in and the use they will make of the obstacles that will bar their way; for instance they may want to crawl under a blanket and tiptoe across a balancing bar.
- Encourage them to select and set up the objects to create the obstacle course.
- Help them check the equipment to ensure that it is not wobbly, but still provides challenge and elements of excitement and risk.
- Suggest that children organise themselves sensibly so that the activity proceeds safely.
- Give appropriate support and supervise sufficiently to ensure that they enjoy the activity.
- Talk with the children to help them evaluate the experiences of climbing, sliding, balancing, crawling and travelling that they have created.
- Give them the time and attention to change the structure of the obstacle course to create new challenges and interest.
The more credit early years practitioners give to children's ability to design and organise their own physical challenges, the more inventive and physically skilful the children will become. It is because children love to challenge their own ability to achieve higher levels of skills that they will respond with excitement to the new activities.
The adult's role is crucial to ensure that children's safety is assured, while providing the risks and experiences that will attract children's interest and participation.
