Special Report - Body and soul

With fewer than one in five under-six-year-olds getting the three hours of recommended daily physical activity, and parents predicting that this summer will be more sedentary than last, early years settings are making a concerted effort to boost children’s daily active play.

Going on nature walks, scooting around the playground, using paint as a whole-body sensory experience and threading beads onto a string are all examples of activities that require the use of fine and gross motor skills, as defined in the Prime area of physical development in the revised EYFS.

But a recent survey of parents undertaken by the Early Intervention Foundation (EIF) found that children are missing out on vital opportunities for healthy development, with only 19 per cent of children between the ages of one and five taking more than three hours of physical activity a day, and only one in four having increased their physical activity since the most recent lockdown lifted.

Children from poorer families are likely to fare worst this summer, with more than one in ten households with an income under £30,000 predicting that their child’s physical activity will be less than last summer due to the cost of accessing soft-play spaces or classes.

Dr Jo Casebourne, chief executive at the EIF, says, ‘Getting enough physical activity in the early years is essential for children’s physical and mental wellbeing, as well as their development throughout childhood and positive health outcomes later in life.’

She adds, ‘In light of growing health disparities between disadvantaged children and their better-off peers, it is concerning to know that so many parents are worried about the cost of taking their child to a play area.’

NATURAL MOVERS

But Dr Lala Manners of Active Matters, who supported the team that created the UK Chief Medical Officers’ Physical Activity Guidelines for early years, which recommends that all children experience at least 180 minutes of daily physical activity, says it is important that early years practitioners ‘don’t get too anxious or stressed about implementing them’.

‘We thought initially they would help raise activity levels, but so far their impact has been disappointing – mainly because there hasn’t been the appropriate level of support available for practitioners to embed them in daily practice, and only a minority would actually know how to do this effectively anyway. Forty-five minutes of being active in a three-hour session should not feel like a mountain to climb, but it sure sounds like it sometimes,’ she adds.

She says there are two main principles that practitioners can use to achieve this daily goal:

• THREAD: This means understanding that opportunities for movement can be threaded throughout the day, in all activities the children are taking part in. Even if they are role-playing Sleeping Beauty and pretending to be asleep, there is a huge element of movement going on. To be still and remain alert is extremely demanding physically and requires a high degree of muscular strength and control to achieve.
• EMBED: This involves creating a culture of movement and wellbeing in which movement skills are properly nurtured and valued. A range of opportunities to move inside and outdoors are freely available throughout the day and PD is fully represented in all curriculum planning and provision.

‘If you’ve got these two elements in your core practice, you have the basis of an effective plan to implement the guidelines,’ Dr Manners explains.

DECREASE IN POSITIVE ATTITUDES

Practitioners have been busy making up for lost time by getting children to move their bodies through whatever means they enjoy and is developmentally appropriate.

Lockdown had a profound impact on the activity levels of some children, particularly those from less-well-off neighbourhoods or minority ethnic families who had lack of access to outdoor space or less space to play at home.

EIF’s research review of how pandemic conditions affected young children’s physical health and development in the UK and across the world found that the decrease in physical activity was accompanied by a decrease in positive attitudes, such as confidence and enjoyment, towards physical activity.

When settings reopened in the pandemic, practitioners reported notable differences in children’s physical development, particularly with their balance and proprioception, and especially in urban areas where homes are smaller and there are fewer opportunities to play outside.

‘Some struggled to sit on a chair at the table, after months sitting on the floor in front of the TV eating with their hands’, explains Dr Manners, who was part of a team that wrote the physical development Principles into the Practice section of Development Matters. ‘And with no stairs to climb and no space to run or crawl, many children also lost a lot of their lower body strength.’

DAILY MOVEMENT PROGRAMMES

Sally Goddard Blythe, a psychologist specialising in neurodevelopmental problems, has devised a screening test that picks up signs of neuromotor immaturity by looking at the physical basis for a child’s ability to sit still, develop control of specific eye movements that are required for reading, writing, copying and catching a ball, and the hand-eye co-ordination involved in handwriting.

Results of a study looking at the physical readiness of 120 UK four- to five-year-olds in the September that they started formal schooling found that 60 per cent showed signs of significant immaturity in the postural and motor skills needed to support motor aspects of learning in the classroom.

Goddard Blythe says, ‘Previous research has shown that there is a correlation between immature physical skills and lower educational achievement. Screening is useful because it can help to point to the type and level of movement programme that is likely to have the greatest impact. The results show that a daily movement programme, particularly if it’s developmentally appropriate, is helpful in improving children’s neuromotor skills and the physical foundations for learning.’

Movement: Your Child’s First Language is a series of songs and narrated stories with corresponding movement activities to be carried out in pre-school and Reception classes. Early results from a school in south Yorkshire suggest that not only do children’s motor skills improve but there was a ‘noticeable increase in children’s spoken and written vocabulary as they started to incorporate language used in the songs and stories into their own stories and conversation’, author Goddard Blythe says.

However, she adds, ‘Indoor daily movement programmes should not be seen as the solution. Daily outdoor activity and free play are just as important.’

MARCHING FORWARD

Dr Manners says it is ‘critical’ that we offer children repeated access to varied environments and resources that can develop their gross motor skills – and support their balance, core strength, stability, spatial awareness and co-ordination.

‘Development of fine motor skills for writing, drawing, threading and cutting are entirely dependent on prior gross-motor development,’ she explains.

‘Being able to sit in the correct upright position for writing requires balance and core strength in the body: the shoulder girdle, elbow and wrist joint must be stable and the fingers must be flexible and strong enough to hold writing materials.

‘Children may still be recovering their gross motor skills. Fine-motor proficiency will undoubtedly follow if we first afford them enough time and opportunities to hop, skip and jump,’ Dr Manners concludes.

CASE STUDY: exploring the senses

Children at Ore Church Mice Pre-School, a pack-away setting in Hastings, East Sussex, enjoy taking part in full-body sensory experiences. Manager Glen Russell took a free online training course, Physical Development in Early Childhood, from the Open University to help counter the cases of poor physical development that he observed in children after lockdown.

He says, ‘Many of our children live in flats in cramped conditions and it was a case of encouraging them to reconnect with their bodies again by getting their balance back and understanding the feeling of walking on uneven surfaces or up steps. Walking through paint, for example, takes concentration so that they don’t slip. We’ve tried to build up their confidence again so that they can trust what bodies are capable of.

‘We use big sheets of plywood on the floor or on the wall, and we cover them with paint. Children use their hands, feet and often their whole bodies to explore how the paint feels on their skin and immerse themselves in the experience. We add cut-down cardboard carpet tubes and the children roll them in the paint, watching the patterns they make, while using their upper body to move the tubes around.

‘We’ve got big builders’ brushes and rollers, but the main focus of the activity is about connecting with their bodies, as the skin is the largest organ in the body. We notice the calming effect it has on their emotions. Watching the way that the paint travels and how it mixes together is great for their visual tracking and concentration.

‘Another favourite activity is scooting through paint in the hallway, which is lined with paper. The focus often goes from scooting to taking shoes and socks off and then performing dances with their own choreography. We often put on their favourite tracks from home – a mix of cultural and popular music.

‘We use a lot of clay. Some children just enjoy carrying lumps of it around and feeling the heaviness of it and the coldness of it. They also love being spun around the room on a trolley board that I’ve attached an expandable hose to. This is great for their inner ear balance and their vestibular system. Encircling a tyre is another favourite. We re-enact parts of a story that I make up along the way.

‘Group activities such as these often work better than formal circle times for our current cohort. After the pandemic, we sensed that children were more wary of the adult-led activities and expressed themselves more through active play. Often, children’s movements and body language and the way they express themselves physically can provide clues to what’s going on for them emotionally.

‘One new little boy spent the first few weeks skipping around the room. Outwardly, it looked like he was happy, but he was anxious and had separation anxiety – and this was his body’s way of expressing it. This is why we encourage lots of artistic expression – so that we can begin to understand how children are feeling through the way they express themselves physically. We find that mirroring their movement helps us connect with them in a way that words often can’t.’

CASE STUDY: action research on bikes

In spring 2020, a group of eight London Early Years Foundation (LEYF) nurseries concerned about the rising rates of child obesity decided to explore whether staff were missing an opportunity to create a positive attitude to fitness by making better use of bikes. They undertook a six-week pilot study, which included seeking parents’ views about the benefits of bikes for their children at nursery.

The action research report, ‘Rethinking How We Use Bikes in the Nursery’, found staff fully understood the physical and sociological benefits to using bikes, but the research reminded them of the multi-usage of bikes across all areas of learning, especially communication. It also acknowledged the barriers to usage, including safe surfaces to ride on, upkeep and repairs.

Saudaa Nadat, area operations manager for the London-based group of nurseries, says, ‘We are lucky enough to have had 240 new bikes donated to us from Bikeworks, a not-for-profit social enterprise, which have been distributed throughout our 39 nurseries.

‘In terms of the types of learning children gained from them, responses ranged from physical development, co-ordination and motor skills to spatial awareness. Some staff also noted the importance of balance bikes as a precursor to learning to cycle.

‘A lot of negotiation takes place with the bikes, as they are popular. There’s also elaborate role play that goes on, with children waiting for a takeaway coffee or stopping to buy ice-cream.’

Top three resources for pack-aways

• Community Playthings’ Grand PlayFrame, £2,855, easily folds away for storage and is ‘so versatile that children never tire of it’, says Ore Church Mice’s Russell.
• Balance bikes and two-wheel pedal bikes are favourites and are in and out of the shed every day. A 12-inch Tadpole balance bike from Frog Bikes costs £225. Or try the Two Wheeler Bike with Pedals – Viking, £194.99, by Cosy.
• Drums are great for tapping out beats. Children learn to control their bodies in the process, banging out beats and bouncing their bodies. Try TTS’s Circle Gathering Drum, £254.99, for group work, or its Outdoor Rainbow Samba Drums (5pk), £1,750; Cosy’s Group Drums (2pk), £64.99; Hope’s Djembe – Pack of 4, £207.99; or a Set of 3 Tom Tom Drums, £45, from TheBritish Percussion Company.
  
  

MORE INFORMATION

• UK Chief Medical Officers’ Physical Activity Guidelines: https://bit.ly/2kwaLyu
• EIF research review: https://bit.ly/3mHlJ0t
• Nursery World: ‘Children may not be “physically” ready to start school – study’: https://bit.ly/3mG4zQG
• Movement: Your Child’s First Language by Sally Goddard Blythe (Hawthorne Press)