Over the Christmas break, I read a range of educational articles about how the full range of physical movements in children is diminishing.
One piece stated that there are ten human movements that are going extinct. Yes, this is certainly powerful and emotive language, but it led me to reflect on my 20+ years of experience in teaching. I have felt for some time that something has shifted in how young children move and control their own bodies and it is not necessarily for the better.
For your reference, here are the 10 human movements going extinct:
- Sitting (without a chair)
- Barefoot walking
- Crawling, get ups and other ground to standing movements
- Balancing
- Jumping and landing
- Carrying something heavy
- Hanging and climbing
- Throwing and catching
- Swimming
- Moving in nature
We all know the reasons why children’s early physicality may be changing. We are also living in this 21st century ‘million-tech-jobs-a-second’ world. We know. We get it. We see it.
BUT at St Peter’s Prep School we never sit still. (No pun intended).
We simply design tasks which enable the school to offer our pupils more experiences of these missing essential human movements.
We do this through our teaching philosophy, curriculum, sports programme, our activity offerings and through our mapped out residential programme. We also meet the pupils’ needs simply through having fun, active and engaging play.
We have recently sent our multi-talented teaching assistants, Mrs Jacquie Evans and Mrs Naomi Stevens, on a FunFit and High Five Training course. They will be delivering top-quality fine and gross motor interventions for our pupils. Thank you to them both for the impact they are about to have on the Pre–prep, initially, and then on our Lower and Upper School pupils.
Keep on moving this January!
Happy New Year to the whole community.
“Let’s get learning”
By Mrs Lucy Ball, Deputy Head Teaching and Learning.
