We talk about moving a lot. We talk about physicality a lot. And sometimes, when we train teachers or speak at conferences, people don’t hear “moving” or “physicality” they hear “sports.”
It is important to understand that what we do is not about sport. Sport is great, but it isn’t for everybody. However, physical activity and physical fitness are for everybody. We all have bodies, and our brains need our bodies to learn how to operate in the world, whether it is to understand how big the body is, where it ends and begins, how to use it to move a pencil across a page, sit still with comfort or keep up with friends on the playground. It also needs the body to lay essential neural wiring that helps us manage our self-regulation and self-control.
The sad thing is that there has been a national decline in physical activity and physical fitness that crosses every race, religion, and socio-economic background, and it has a direct impact on our children’s academic success. As humans, we need strong bodies and a well-developed connection between the body and brain to find classroom and, ultimately, personal success. For children, this is all fueled by big-body physical play and movement.
The fact is that kids today are lacking in the practice of moving their bodies, which makes moving no fun. We all know kids are less likely to do things that aren’t fun, and when moving isn’t fun, kids won’t do it. Ultimately, this leads to a downward spiral into more sedentary behaviors, making moving even more challenging.
But when kids have ample opportunity to move their bodies and practice what their bodies can do, then their brains learn how to use their bodies to perform in school, making school easier and more fun. So, our curriculum focuses on moving for fun. This helps kids learn to move their bodies with confidence while secretly building the strengths, skills, and movement patterns they need for school.
And the beauty is, when we get kids moving, we are tapping into something they already crave. How do we know? Open the door to a classroom or the gym or even the gate to the playground. What do kids do? They take off screaming in delight. This is Mother Nature’s way of telling their bodies to move to fuel appropriate brain development.
Their brains need their bodies.
Here is the rub: we know that in the first five years of life, the brain grows faster than at any other time. By 5 years old a child’s brain is 90% fully grown. This growth happens with new experiences. And every new experience builds a new pathway in the brain. As children grow, learn more, and explore more, these new experiences happen over and over and over, each one making a new connection, laying new neural wiring, and, ultimately, growing young brains.
Now consider this: the vast majority of a young child’s experiences are physical, and most of those physical experiences are motor-based. So if children aren’t moving, their brains aren’t growing.
Let’s be clear, children have to move to learn.
As a species, humans gain fundamental locomotor movements in early childhood, and the more opportunities we have to practice them, the stronger and more confident we get in moving the body and using the body. This confidence then fuels our desire to push the skill level higher so we master new skills. When we repeat this over and over we become physically literate.
This parallels with the progression of academic literacy. Children who master letters and phonics will have the confidence to tackle beginning readers, then chapter books, and eventually full novels. But children who struggle will fall behind.
The same holds for physical skills. Children who struggle with early skills like balance and core strength will struggle with physical activity. They will lack the confidence to tackle bigger physical challenges. And when this is repeated they become physically illiterate. And when they fail to gain this strength and confidence, they will lose interest in play.
These are the children who choose to sit out in PE and at recess. As they do, their peers continue to gain strengths, skills, and motor patterns, widening the gap as those who sit out flat line in their skill development. And by default, these children who choose to sit out are sedentary. We know that sedentary children are likely to be sedentary teens and that sedentary teens are highly likely to become sedentary adults. Adding fuel to the fire, sedentary adults teach their children to be sedentary.
We need to break the cycle and close the gap. Not for health, health ends up being the gravy in all of this. We need to get kids moving because kids need to USE their bodies to learn. Furthermore, their brains crave that movement to wire their brains with the tools to manage their self-regulation, self-control, and behavior.
It boils down to this: when we fail to get kids time to move in school, it is like giving them half of what they need to learn: half of a desk, half of a pencil, half of a book, or even half of an equation, and expecting them to be successful. It is highly frustrating and ultimately impossible.
It is time to break the cycle, close the gap, and get kids on a trajectory that sets them up for a happy school experience rooted in developmentally appropriate behavior, namely, moving and big-body physical play.
