Physical development: Let's move
Space and equipment for physical play needs to be challenging but accessible to the children in your setting. Julian Grenier discusses how to make the most of it
Space and equipment for physical play needs to be challenging but accessible to the children in your setting. Julian Grenier discusses how to make the most of it
Space, fresh air and children's freedom of movement have all been considered essential to early years education in Britain for more than a hundred years.
However, outdoor areas like the garden at Woodlands Park Nursery Centre have felt pretty damp, grey and dismal this winter. With wind and rain often penetrating the most sheltered corners, it is easy to feel gloomy about outdoor play.
But there is still a buzz in the excitement of physical activity every morning as children arrive and move freely in and outdoors. The enjoyment the children feel is impressive as they splash in puddles, scoop up mud with shovels and battle for proficiency on the monkey bars and scooters.
Physical activity is important in itself, as a means of staying healthy and developing controlled movement. It is also crucial to other areas of learning.
Children find out about spaces, perspectives and heights as they run around an area or climb to the top of a climbing frame. Early scientific learning about textures and how substances change as they are mixed together will often take place in the context of physical exploration, like the feel of carpet when you slide along it, or the experience of getting bogged down in mud.
Children communicate powerfully with movement as they engage each other in chasing, or dancing, or spinning in a gust of wind. Some of children's earliest pretend play occurs in the context of physical movement, pushing cars along the floor and making engine noises, and making cups of tea and pans of soup in the sand tray.
'For young children, physical development is inseparable from all other aspects of development,' says Lesley Staggs, who is responsible for overseeing the implementation of the Foundation Stage as the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority's principal manager for the early years. 'They learn by being active and interactive. Effective physical development helps them develop a positive sense of well-being.'
In planning for children's physical development, practitioners need to be concerned about children's safety. Equipment should be checked, and risks assessed, on a regular basis. But children also need to be challenged and stimulated, and it is common to see children taking the most risks when the equipment is not demanding enough. I can vividly remember children scaling the wire fence when I taught in a nursery class with a small outdoor area which lacked exciting climbing equipment. It is also worth remembering that equipment does not have to be high to be challenging. Monkey bars, ropes and narrow beams can all be quite low, so that there is little risk of serious injury.
Careful planning and organisation are vital. If the bikes only come out once a week, then the level of demand is likely to be high. There will probably be a lot of conflict over them too. But equally, going outdoors and always seeing the same old collection of bikes and climbing equipment is unlikely to inspire anyone. The different needs of children can be met if the core equipment is readily available but it is adapted and extended to provide more challenges.
A fixed climbing frame soon becomes boring, but if practitioners clip on ladders, beams and ropes then the equipment will remain interesting to the children. Bikes can be made more challenging with the addition of trailers, or if there is a tricky trail to follow. Children will benefit most from equipment which can be arranged flexibly, which is challenging but safe, and which they can access regularly.
Julian Grenier is deputy head of the Woodlands Park Nursery Centre, part of the London Borough of Haringey's Early Excellence Network
