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Free Wriggle & Rhyme, Active Movement for Early Learning sessions are happening at your local library.
Northcote Library - Mondays 10am
Takapuna Library - Mondays 11.30am
Glenfield Library - Tuesdays 9.30am
Albany Village - Thursdays 9.30am
East Coast Bays - Thursdays 11am
Devonport - Fridays 10am
Birkenhead - Fridays - 11.30am
For more info please click here
Parents have a unique bond with their children. This gives parents the opportunity to foster and nurture a healthy lifestyle for their children. Active movement experiences are one key component of this. Children require support to develop and practice fundamental movement skills, the “building blocks” for life long participation in Sport and Recreation.
Fundamental movement skills
Active movement defines four fundamental movement skills – These are the building blocks for more complicated movements such as those required for playing sports, gymnastics, dancing etc.
Locomotor - Is moving from one location to another.
This can include running, hopping, jumping and crawling, dodging & skipping.
Manipulative skills - include catching, throwing, kicking and hitting an object. These are the skills we need for moving balls and objects around on the sports field/court.
Stability skills - enable us to balance whilst moving or staying still, this set of skills also includes landing, rolling, rotation and spinning
Movement and body awareness - is the understanding of “what my body is like and how I move with it
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PARENTS:
Possess the active child image:
From birth, babies are constantly learning to move and learning through their movement. Children will learn and grow as nature intended with parents holding a positive image of the moving ad learning growing child.
Provide daily opportunities:
Daily active movement experiences dispersed throughout the child’s day will provide optimum growing and learning development. Time is necessary to learn Active Movement skills.
Create playfulness:
Take time to play and enjoy your child developing in Active Movement.
Create Active Movement traditions:
Make Active Movement a tradition. Commit to and enjoy Active Movement as a family at least once per week, such as involved in kappa haka, taking a walk – in the bush, along the beach, around the lake, at the river. Enjoy what Mother Earth has provided.
Use aids appropriately:
Limit the use of equipment that restricts a child’s natural ability to move and develop, for example, car seats are intended for the car and inappropriate use can limit a child’s opportunities for activities. Some aids may inhibit correct development of hips and legs, limit body rotation and have high accident rates.
Avoid inactivity:
We know that many hours of TV/video watching, playing on computers and game consoles, limits the development of the brain/body system as well as providing opportunities for extra food snacking. Set time limits and be selective.
Be a positive role model:
A young child’s appreciation of Active Movement begins with the parent. Find an activity that works for you – walking the dog, riding a bike, swimming, lifting weights, waka racing.
Movement and Balance - The Vestibular Sense
The neck, eyes and body provide information about gravity and space, balance and movement. They help us to learn about our head and body position in relation to the ground.
The Vestibular sense can be stimulated and developed by lying on the floor on the tummy, side and back, belly wiggling and squirming, then rolling over in both directions. Daily inclusion of slow spinning, swinging (carefully placing the child where its head is lower than the rest of its body will also enhance this development).
NB. Wide awake babies require plenty of time on stomachs in order to explore and strengthen what their bodies can do.
Movement and Balance - The Proprioceptive Sense
Sometimes known as the 6th sense, the Proprioceptive Sense s closely related to the Vestibular System.
This sense provides information through joints, about the body position, force, direction and movement of body parts. Its function is to increase body awareness and coordinate gross and fine motor experiences.
It assists with body expression, and being able to move efficiently and economically. When a child trusts their body, they feel connected and safe and secure.
An example of the Proprioceptive Sense in young children is when they learn to walk and it becomes an automatic action. Here the proprioception and motor systems take over, utilizing a feedback system to accomplish a job that the unconscious brain already has learned. The brain can go on to do other things, because it would mainly just hinder smooth muscle processes with too much thought and analysis. That is why humans do so many learned things best if not thought about. Remember your golf swing!
Carrying, pushing, pulling and other vigorous Active Movement experiences develop this sense.
Movement and Touch - The Tactile Sense
The tactile sense provides information through the surface of the skin, from head to toe, about the texture, shape and size of objects in the environment as well as one’s self (body awareness).
This sense connects with vision to interpret how objects feel.
Experiences from birth include: massage, being cuddled, exposure to different sensations, feathers, wind, soft material, bare feet, finger plays, active body awareness games, hands on experiences, messy play, rough and tumble play.
Movement and Vision
The ability of the eyes to learn to work together. The eyes must be actively moving for learning to occur. 90% of vision takes place in the brain as sight forms networks with other senses.
The vision sense can be stimulated by lying on the tummy and the back for the child to search the environment. Searching for stationary and moving objects, in and just out of reach. (Develops eye muscles).
NB: TV locks children’s eyes into one position and the full range of eye movement is not activated. It also inhibits visualisation.
Learning to Cross the Midline of the Body
With opportunities to explore their bodies, senses and surroundings, the developing child will gain ability in using both sides of their bodies in coordinated and different ways. For example waving two arms at the same time, kicking feet in an alternate pattern, crawling, climbing stairs, throwing a beach ball, jumping two feet to two feet.
Becoming proficient at these experiences enables the ability to cross the midline of the body. This is using the eye, hand, or foot of one side of the body in the space of the other, eye, hand or foot.
This skill is essential for the two hemispheres of the brain to be able to communicate with each other and pass information back and forth.
How Will Crossing The Midline Help Your Child?
By learning to cross the midline a child’s abilities will be enhanced and as an older child it will help with:
1) Eye-hand, eye-foot movements e.g. throwing, catching, kicking balls, scissor cutting, threading, gluing and writing.
2) Following instructions – learning to listen then being able to carry out instructions.
3) Developing spatial awareness concepts such as left and right.
4) Vision – Three dimensional viewing and following objects with the eyes (tracking) and the two eyes learning to work together. This is essential to have acquired before the child begins to learn to read and to be able to comprehend what they are reading. (Reading being a two dimensional activity does not develop the full range of eye movements)
5) Cross-pattern movements e.g. biking with pedals, crawling, stair climbing, marching, swimming and climbing trees safely.
6) Learning to direct one part of the body to move according to plan while the other parts remain still or does something different. The child is able to do this when the fetal reflexes are lost and by practising cross-pattern movements.
7) Letters and numbers are written in the correct direction and the full page is used.
8) Concepts of print – knowing which way up a book is and where print begins.
9) Tying shoe laces.
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