Why Jumping Makes Kids Smarter: The Hidden Skill Behind Learning

This post is part of a two-part series on the movement skills that underlie academic learning. For the companion post on bilateral movement and how running connects to writing, start here: What is Running to Writing?

Forest Gump says he and Jenny go together like peas and carrots. To be honest, I don’t like peas, but I have always loved the concept of two vegetables being perfect for each other and making each other better.

While carrots are just fine without the peas, logic needs jumping. Why? Jumping requires a key perceptual motor skill: temporal awareness — the internal understanding of rhythm and time. Temporal awareness is dependent on sequences that follow a specific pattern and order. Logic is also dependent upon sequences that follow a specific pattern and order.

And here’s what most parents and educators don’t know: temporal awareness is the hidden skill underneath reading fluency, math sequencing, following multi-step directions, and the ability to hold a thought long enough to finish it. It develops primarily through one thing — moving the body.

What Is Temporal Awareness — And Why Does It Matter Academically?

Temporal awareness is your internal clock. It’s the part of the brain that knows when to act, what comes next, and how long something takes. For very young children, time is almost entirely concrete — tomorrow is one sleep away, anything in the past happened “yesterday,” anything coming is “tomorrow.” Preschoolers begin to grasp the difference between a minute and an hour. By elementary school, children should have a firm internal sense of hours, days, weeks, and months — and the sequencing that goes with all of it.

But temporal awareness isn’t just about clocks and calendars. It’s about the internal rhythm that allows the brain to process sequences — in movement, in language, in math, and in logic.

Here’s what it looks like when temporal awareness is working well in the classroom:

A child reads with natural rhythm and flow — the pattern of language on the page matches an internal rhythm they already carry. They track smoothly, left to right, line by line, without losing their place.

A child holds a three-step direction in working memory and executes it in order — first this, then that, then this — without losing step two while doing step one.

A child works through a math sequence with confidence — skip counting, place value, long division — because their brain has a solid internal framework for what comes next and when.

And here’s what it looks like when temporal awareness needs support:

A child reads the words correctly but haltingly, without flow or rhythm. They skip lines, lose their place, re-read the same sentence. Not because they don’t know the words — but because the rhythmic pattern of language on the page doesn’t match anything solid inside them yet.

A child gets to step two of a direction and has already lost step three — not because they weren’t listening, but because their internal sequencing system can’t hold the chain.

A child struggles with math sequences — not the operations themselves, but the ordered pattern that math is built on.

And crucially: when temporal awareness is underdeveloped, children spend enormous mental energy just executing the sequence — and forget what they were doing in the middle of doing it. The sequencing consumes all their cognitive resources. There is nothing left for the actual learning. (Williams 2025)

How the Body Builds It

Temporal awareness is built through the physicality of play — when children jump, swing, throw, and climb. They internalize these rhythms, patterns, and sequences and use them as a foundation for logic.

Jumping, climbing, running, swinging, and kicking a ball are all physical motor patterns that require a series of actions to happen in a specific order for success. Remember how hard it was to get the rhythm of pumping your legs while swinging? Remember the struggle of crossing the monkey bars? They both require a pattern and rhythm. But once mastered, they work in the background without a lot of thought.

Jumping

Jumping is one of the clearest examples. Watch a young child begin the process of learning to jump and you will see the development of temporal awareness in real time. Jumping requires a sequence of precise movements to be successful:

1. Bend the knees
2. Push the hips and weight back
3. Push against the floor to extend the legs and begin to propel forward
4. Upon landing, the knees bend to cushion the impact

When a child misses some of the steps, the jump looks awkward — maybe even painful. Some children will land with straight legs. Others attempt to push off the floor with straight legs. Through trial and error, they begin to piece together the steps needed for a successful jump and make appropriate adjustments. The more precise these movements, the more successful the action. This is temporal awareness in movement.

Throwing

Throwing works exactly the same way. A successful throw requires seven steps to fire in a specific order: pull the arm back, lead with the elbow, step with the opposite foot, rotate the trunk, follow with the forearm and hand, extend the arm, release the fingers. Miss a step — or do them out of order — and the ball goes anywhere. Sideways. Straight up. Into the ground. The body is executing a logical sequence. And every practice throw is a sequencing workout.

Skipping

Skipping is another example that starts by first mastering a gallop — which is half of a skip. Very specific steps must happen to gallop across a room. The gallop starts with a step and a hop and continues that pattern, always leading with the same foot. Once galloping is mastered, skipping comes with the same step-hop pattern, but now with alternating feet.

What is more magical is that skipping and galloping also require the recruitment of both sides of the brain, reinforcing the essential conversation between the two hemispheres and further strengthening not just logic, but creative thinking and problem solving. This is because galloping or skipping requires the two sides of the body to be used in completely different ways at different parts of the sequence. A child needs an internalized understanding of both sides of the body and the sequence, rhythm, and timing needed to execute the pattern with success.

Where Temporal Awareness Starts

Children first begin to understand rhythm with the general rhythms of life: get up, eat breakfast, brush teeth, go to school. Having a regular daily schedule with mealtime, playtime, school time, and bedtime allows them to internalize that rhythm. (Check out our blog “Why a Schedule Is Important” for more on this.)

Children under two begin understanding these concepts through the rhythm of music and the sequencing of movements like clapping patterns, crawling, walking, galloping, and skipping. Young children also strengthen their temporal awareness through the rhythm and patterning of language and speech — when books are read aloud to them and when they are exposed to and included in conversations.

Children take these rhythms and patterns — learned from moving their bodies, conversing, singing songs, clapping, and reading aloud — and internalize them, then apply them to classroom skills.

Reading uses temporal awareness because it is dependent upon a sequence and pattern in the words on the page. Writing requires putting a pencil to paper and applying a specific order of pencil marks to successfully create a letter or sentence. Math requires sequencing and patterning in equations. Logic requires the ability to noodle out a sequence to reach a conclusion.

These connections are all reinforced through movement, which helps the brain connect the rhythms, sequences, and patterning of the body’s movement so that the eyes, arms, and legs can move in coordination. Temporal awareness affects the controlled and habitual movements of walking, running, climbing, skipping, jumping, and throwing. The smoother and more coordinated these movements are, the more secure the temporal awareness becomes.

The Screen Problem

Temporal awareness is usually something we develop naturally, behind the scenes, while in big-body play. The more we move our bodies, the more it is developed and strengthened.

But the two-dimensional world of a screen limits the development of these skills. Tapping, swiping, and scrolling do not require the body to execute a multi-step physical sequence in rhythm and order. They do not build the internal clock. Nearly 40% of two-year-olds now have their own tablets, and the time children spend in sedentary screen-based activity is time the body is not building the sequencing foundation that academic learning depends on.

The more time spent in sedentary activities, the more likely an issue will arise. Keeping kids moving will encourage the development of these crucial skills, and purposeful play can help remediate deficiencies.

Signs a Child May Need Support

Children who are challenged with temporal awareness might show:

• Challenges with time concepts
• Struggles with sequencing and patterning
• Challenges with rhythm
• Awkwardness or clumsiness that doesn’t improve with practice
• Challenges with galloping at age 4
• Challenges with skipping at age 5 or 6
• Difficulty following multi-step instructions
• Discomfort with change or schedule disruption
• Halting, arrhythmic reading fluency
• Difficulty holding a math sequence

Activities and Games to Build Temporal Awareness

Rhythm games are a great way to develop temporal awareness — whether clapping patterns, stomping patterns, verbal patterns, or jumping patterns.

• Miss Mary Mack
• Hopscotch
• Jumping: across the floor, down from a low height, or up to a low height
• Throwing: beanbags, tennis balls, yarn balls
• Kicking
• Crawling
• Galloping and skipping
• Reading aloud every single day
• Singing — songs have rhythm, pattern, sequence, and timing built in

What Does Time Look Like at Different Ages?

For the very young, the time concept is particularly challenging. At best, they may understand that something happening tomorrow is one “sleep” away. Often anything that happened in the past gets labeled “yesterday” and anything in the future is expected “tomorrow.”

Preschoolers begin to get a better grasp of the passage of time, starting to understand the difference between a minute and an hour.

By elementary school, children should have a firm grasp of time — understanding the difference between hours, days, weeks, and months.

Want to go deeper on the bilateral movement piece — how running, crawling, and cross-body movement connect to reading and writing? Read the companion post here: What is Running to Writing?

And if you’re a teacher wondering where your classroom stands, take our free five-minute self-assessment: Is Your Classroom Movement-Ready? 

Citations: Williams, Jane. Temporal Awareness: Helping your child be a great learner — It’s all in the timing. Accessed 4/8/25. activebabiessmartkids.com

Williams, Jane. Temporal Awareness: Helping your child be a great learner — It’s all in the timing.  Accessed 4/8/25. activebabiessmartkids.com http://activebabiessmartkids.com.au/articles/great-learner-timing/