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On Your Marks! Get Set! Go!
Our Queenstown tamariki love to be outside and moving and we are lucky to have a large outdoors space available to the children, including a bike track, swings and extensive climbing equipment. This term our centre has participated in the On Your Marks programme offered by Sports Otago.
Luke has been running sessions with the children throughout this term introducing different games and activities to the children, each designed to support the learning of different skills linked to body awareness, stability, locomotion and manipulation.
These games provide the opportunity to practice different movements, such as hopping, twisting, balancing, coordination and control. The children have loved taking part in these activities, exploring new movement skills and gaining confidence. We have also been making use of the Sports Otago play trailer, which contains lots of different play equipment such as large pipes, ropes, foam mats, rackets and balls of all shapes and sizes, and even a small trampoline!
It has been wonderful to see the creativity and imagination of our children as they explore these objects, using them in different combinations to create houses, cars, telephones, and to practice balancing, rolling, lifting and swinging. By working together in this way, children are not only developing their physical movement, but also strengthening their oral language and social competencies as they communicate effectively to manipulate the equipment and play together.