This term, Primary school students at FMS have been practising new skills, increasing their physical activity, and learning about heart health as part of the Jump Rope for Heart program.
By participating in the program, FMS primary students have been jumping, skipping, hopping and moving more every day. They are also choreographing their own moves! Committing to their practice daily, out of school hours, students are spending less time on screens and more time outside, developing their fitness learning new skills, and having loads of fun in the process.
As our Primary students take part in this exciting event, we remind FMS families with younger children of the importance of movement for health, from the very earliest age.
Encouraging movement from infancy supports healthy childhood development. Age and stage appropriate movement has significant developmental benefits for infants and children as they progress through the toddler years, and into early childhood (and beyond).
Here are some tips to help get your babies and toddlers moving in the healthiest ways!
Safe Space for Movement
To develop movement and enhance this process, we need to actively provide infants with the time and space to move safely and often. We tend to keep babies in pouches, cribs, bassinets and other types of seats, so it’s important to carve out space and time to encourage movement.
When you do, you’ll see that infants will kick and wriggle and slither around and sometimes move their bodies in a clockwise direction.
When infants attempt to slither and move, they are very focused. This concentration allows them to start connecting how the mind and body work together. In Your Child’s Growing Mind: Brain Development and Learning from Birth to Adolescence, Dr. Jane Healy offers an important reminder:
“After birth, physical activities are one of the child’s main means of advancing physical, intellectual, and emotional growth, so you should encourage many forms of body movement.”
To safely move their bodies, babies need clothing that doesn’t restrict their movements. Comfortable fabrics with forgiving elastics are best. Light clothing around the arms and legs offers more opportunities for movement and exploration. It’s also best to allow babies to have bare feet so they receive more sensory input as they begin to move.
Hands Send Information to the Brain
In addition to gross motor development, which will progress from slithering to crawling to walking, infants are taking in information about the world through their hands.
Babies become aware of the connection between what they observe and what they touch. Although infant mitts are adorable and seem useful to keep infants from scratching themselves, it’s much more beneficial for babies’ development to have their hands uncovered.
Children’s development of their hands is directly connected to the development of their brains. The brain sends a signal to the hand, and the hand moves and sends a sensory message back. With this new information, the brain can guide the hand in new ways, thus allowing the hand to discover more information by moving in a new direction. And the feedback loop continues!
Gross Motor Skills Start with Tummy Time
While infants are developing fine motor skills through coordination of their hands, they are also developing gross motor abilities. Babies need opportunities to develop muscles, particularly the large muscles in their trunk and neck. Time lying on their belly is important, as this provides the opportunity for infants to push up with their arms and develop a stronger torso and neck.
Tummy time “push-ups” help create the coordination and strength for subsequent large-muscle development. As infants develop the torso and neck control to push themselves into a seated position, they free their hands for further exploration and development.
From “tummy-time” to rolling, to sitting up, to scooting, to crawling, and eventually, to walking and jumping – our young children are beginning to explore their world and develop their sense of self.
Movement Matters!
Sensorial experiences are vital for the development of movement. The more infants use parts of their body to explore their world, the more refined their movements become and the more they can make sense of their surroundings.
Children need continual opportunities to explore, practice, and repeat movements through simulating and purposeful activities in a safe and supportive setting. Through repeated and consistent movement, infants and toddlers develop their muscles as they perfect, fine-tune and build complexity in their movements.
Montessori learning environments are set up to allow opportunities for infants, toddlers and children to develop and practice movement. From strengthening head and neck muscles in our Baby Step to Montessori groups, to fine motor gripping in a toddler, all the way to skipping and jumping rope as a pre-teen!
If you’d like more ideas or support with younger children or infants, chat to us about our baby & toddler programs, or come along for a free trial session.
