My husband and I are in the process of completing our adoption home study in hopes of adding a toddler or preschooler to our family. We have no other children, so most people's reaction to the news is something along the lines of, "Oh my, they're so active... will you have enough energy to start out with that age?" Everyone understands that young children embrace the freedom that comes with mobility and - quite literally - run with it.
Young children's activity level is often a frustrating balance for both parents or teachers. As well as various physical skills and academics, preschoolers have reached the age in which they are learning what kinds of actions or responses are appropriate at different times and places. Most care-givers have at some point exclaimed "Don't run!" or "Slow down!" or, in the case of my classroom, "Walking feet!" Adults often react as though the children are simply out of control. In fact, preschoolers' energy opens up an entire avenue towards learning how to be mature and responsible members of society. Rupnow and Morain (2000) prepared a .pdf article for the University of Iowa about preschoolers and movement in which they sum up my beliefs well:
Hops, skips, and jumps are not simply child’s play. Daily movement is an important part of a child’s educational experience. Preschoolers are ready to acquire and practice new motor skills at this stage of rapid development. New experiences can help them learn motor skills that they’ll use for a lifetime. (p.1)Teachers watch for and assess preschoolers' physical development in two areas: gross and fine motor skills. This does not mean that their movement is either disgusting or attractive! Gross motor skills refer to large types of movement, such as running and jumping. Fine motor skills are those movements that are smaller, like writing or using silverware properly at the table. Hopefully you'll agree that both areas are vital for living our daily lives. But what specific physical things are our preschoolers learning through their movement?
- Preschoolers are working on balance. In gross motor movement they're learning how to balance with their legs, in their ability to move from one place to another. Actions that are fast and dizzying, such as spinning in a swing or merry-go-round, helps the brain's connections to the inner ear - and the inner ear itself - grow and strengthen. In fine motor movement children learn how to balance small things, strengthening different muscles in the hands and arms. Children train their hands how to balance food on a fork, or how to balance paper in the right direction to cut on the line. They learn how to balance a pitcher to pour juice into cups. This is the stage at which the muscles and the brain work together to learn through motions.
- Preschoolers are working on hand/eye coordination and spatial awareness. This involves teaching that "instinctive" knowledge of how far away you are from something and being able, with conscious effort, to connect yourself with another place in some way. In gross motor skills this can be hitting a ball with a bat or successfully skipping the entire length of the hop scotch board. In fine motor skills, it can be coloring inside the lines or sorting buttons into the right bowls. These kinds of movement not only train the muscles' interaction with the brain, but also help develop children's depth perception. Children's vision typically is not 20/20; instead, most young children are farsighted, and binocular vision is not fully formed until age 6 - or even age 9 for some children (NAEYC, 1997). Movement in both gross and fine motor for preschoolers gives their bodies the opportunity to complete that process.
- Preschoolers are becoming more physically healthy. In the previous post regarding nutrition, we discussed how proper nutrition is a balance of energy in and energy processed and energy expended. When a person does not expend the energy they put into their body, it turns into fat. Peters tells us that "Childhood obesity is now the most prevalent nutritional disease in children 18 years of age and younger" (as cited in Robertson, 2007, p. 252). Ogden et al. states that "more than 10% of children ages 2 to 5 years are overweight" (as cited in Robertson, 2007, p. 252). These statistics are a few years old now, but it's generally understood to have increased as opposed to decreased in those years. Allowing your preschooler to be physically active expends energy to keep it in balance so that they can grow healthily in all areas of development.
I'm hoping that this has been an encouraging post for you. But if you have read through this and discovered that you should encourage more action in your preschooler, here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Turn off the TV, computer, and video games. Even the educational ones. Sit down with them and decide on a list of age-appropriate things that they could do instead, and then teach them how to put those activities together. Make sure that their list of things to do indoors include both fine motor skills (coloring, cutting, crafts, measuring or stirring things in the kitchen while supervised, many activities in pretend play) and gross motor skills (riding a tricycle in the basement, pushing a toy train, building a play fort with sofa cushions). If you're coming up short of things to do, teach them how to help you with the chores at home that do not involve dangerous cleaning supplies. Preschoolers are still young enough to find chores exciting! (Just remember that their best work is not your best work, and you may want to come back and fix the job later.)
- Send them outside. Give them boundaries and guidelines as to where they may roam while at home. Take them to the park or give them stretching, climbing, or running challenges. Sunshine also provides Vitamin D, which works with calcium to strengthen bones and teeth, and which also has been found to affect mood. Note: Preschoolers are still in the process of learning how to form good social relationships, as well as remembering sequence. Because of this, competitive or team sports often bewilders them or hurts their feelings. While a few preschool children may be prepared for competition, some children even in Kindergarten and First Grade are still developing those social skills. Take your child's personality and temperament in mind before enrolling them in competitive sports. There are, however, many team groups for young children that focus on developing social skills and not on competition; finding one of these teams is an excellent idea!
- Play with your kids. If your children tend to get themselves in trouble when the TV is off, it's because they're either bored or they want your attention. Remove the opportunity for trouble by joining them in their activity. Try just being a participating moderating presence in whatever your child wants to do instead of directing. Most importantly, have fun moving with your child!
Reference List .pdf
No comments:
Post a Comment