Imagine you are on a crowded sidewalk in New York City. It seems everyone is going one way and you are fighting against them to go the opposite direction. As an adult, you are likely fighting that tide of people because you have an appointment, a meeting, or a specific destination in the opposite direction. Considering the volume of people, an adult might pause a moment and wonder if they were missing something because the sensation feels off: you are going in what seems to be the wrong way.
As adults we feel that way because we have learned from our experiences crawling into tight spaces for games of hide-and-seek, learning to run in a pack towards a soccer ball (before we understood position on the field), or shimmying up the slide with a friend.
Believe it or not, the concept of direction and space is hard to understand unless they are experienced with the whole body. When we played Red Rover, Kick the Can, and built forts, we learned about the amount of space our bodies take up in this world. When we moved over, under, or around playground equipment, we learned about direction and what it takes to move our bodies horizontally, vertically, right or left, even if we were too young for the vocabulary to capture the meaning.
When kids sit still or play video games, their stillness is preventing their brains from using their bodies to learn about direction and space. And if kids don’t move their bodies a whole lot, their brains can’t understand how much space their bodies take up. If their brains don’t understand how much their bodies take up, they can’t apply that knowledge to the space a letter takes up in a word or a word takes up on a page. If kids don’t move their bodies, their brains cannot understand the concept of moving their pencil from one side of the page to the other. They cannot visualize that horizontal is not the same as vertical. They cannot understand the difference between the middle of the page or the side of the page, the top of the page, or the bottom.
In other words, learning to read and write will be harder if children don’t move their bodies first.
When we play running games with preschoolers, we usually have kids run in the same direction, even if it is a game of tag. This helps them learn about space and direction while preventing accidents. However, there is almost always one child who consistently runs the wrong way, despite the fact that every single child in the class is running directly at her. She will keep plowing through her friends, much like the adult on a crowded New York City street. The difference is, the child running in the opposite direction doesn’t have an appointment or a meeting, just a challenge with directional and spatial awareness.
With ample opportunities to use the body in big body play, kids can develop directional and spatial awareness in the background while having good old-fashioned fun. Much like children from the 1970s, the ’50s, the Victorian Age even the caveman days, kids are designed to move and play. When they do, they have lots of time to lay a foundation of physicality that sets them up for future success, whether it is in the classroom, on the playground, or in life.
So let’s get out of the way and let kids play!
Photo by Cameron Casey
