Jumping, crawling, hopping and balancing….
these are all great ways to develop gross motor skills, keep us fit, healthy and feeling good!
It also helps to develop our vestibular senses!
The vestibular system is a sensory system in the inner ear responsible for maintaining balance and spatial orientation. The vestibular sense is your body’s system for maintaining balance and spatial orientation. It primarily uses information from your inner ear to detect head movements and changes in position relative to gravity.
This information is crucial for postural control eye movements and overall awareness of your body’s location in space. This has been a focus for our tuakana tamariki to support them with balance, coordination and spatial awareness. Hopping is a springing action that involves taking off from one foot and landing on that same foot. It involves dynamic balance, with the non-hopping side adding counterbalance and force to assist with the continuous forwards and upwards movement.
Crawling is one of the earliest cross-lateral movements we learn in life. A baby’s leg will move forward while the opposite arm moves forward. Cross-lateral movements involve limbs on one side of the body doing something different than the limbs on the other side of the body.
Physical activities that involve crossing the midline of the body strengthen the connection between the two sides of the brain. Jumping is the transfer of weight from one or both feet to both feet. A jump can be divided into three parts: take-off, flight and landing.
Landing safely is an important skill to focus on when learning to jump, so we have also been supporting children with how to land with their hands out when falling. The importance of gross motor control is fundamental for our tamariki to support them with being school-ready and having the foundation skills for learning.