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Let's Get Physical: Developing Skills to Improve Your Quality of Life
Learning Beyond Academics
When it comes to learning, a lot of emphasis has been placed on a child’s academic development. Knowing colors, identifying the letters of the alphabet and corresponding sounds, reading in kindergarten, and counting to 100. The internet is brimming with ideas to cultivate academic scholars beginning in infancy, running through toddlerhood, preschool, and grade school. And these academic skills are important for a child to learn. But what about the child’s physical development? Sure, we know about activities like tummy time, and every parent is on the lookout for milestones like rolling, sitting up independently, crawling, and walking, but why are these activities so important? Once these skills are achieved, is there anything else? What are the physical milestones that comes later in childhood?
Jumping, crawling, rolling, walking, running, exploring and climbing are all examples of activities we learn in childhood. We learn these activities because they work to develop basic and complex skills. Those skills are the foundations of our lives. During the months of September and October, we are going to highlight 6 of those skills: balance, coordination, strength, team work, agility, and motor planning. And we are going to give you activities that address these skills. Bonus: many activities will develop more than one skill. For example, climbing can develop coordination, motor planning, and strength.
Why continue to partake in activities that develop these skills?
In short, it isn’t enough to initially develop these skills, we must continue to improve and practice them. If we do not continue to practice these skills, we can begin to lose the ability; in addition, improving these basic skills will result in improved execution of many activities in our daily lives from our hobbies to our jobs, cooking and driving, walking and recreation.
There are so many reasons to develop and improve these skills, the below list is just the beginning.
Balance: injury prevention, increased control of body, improved cognitive function, increased focus
Coordination (hand/eye, left/right side): increased control of body, injury prevention, improved reading, writing, and even driving skills
Strength (muscle and bone): increase endurance, injury prevention, increased control over body (improved fine and gross motor skills)
Teamwork: social interaction and skills, communication, conflict resolution, cooperation
Agility: injury prevention, refined skill, increased endurance, enhanced memory
Motor planning: improved gross and fine motor skills, increased coordination, enhanced time management skills and preparedness