Work Matters: Continuing Professional Development - movement play

A new programme linking early learning to movement has been unveiled by charity Jabadao. Most are one-day courses blending theory with practice and discussion.

'All of Jabadao's training is about making links for practitioners between movement and learning, and exploring child-led, spontaneous movement play,' says director Penny Greenland.

Jabadao's Every Child a Talker (17 May) shows how child-led movement play supports rich communication and language development.

'Part of this course looks at how a child's speech and language benefit from having full access to movement play,' says Ms Greenland. 'Movement is a child's first language and we need to counter the tendency for our culture to ignore this and jump for words. Children will often speak less in nursery than when they are at home but practitioners can address this by speaking their own language in terms of movement.'

Jabadao's Developmental Movement Play Certificate provides five days tuition over the course of a year. It equips practitioners to support 'full-bodied, whole-hearted children's movement'. It encourages fine motor and gross motor skills and balance and co-ordination in a child-led way.

'It was developed as a result of a two-year consultation with the sector,' says Ms Greenland. 'We discovered that a lot of practitioners were nervous about supporting movement play and perceived it as a specialist area, partly because of the health and safety considerations. There was also a lack of understanding about the fundamental theory underpinning it.

The course also counters the misconception that movement play must happen outdoors. 'Children need to move around wherever they are. It is very much about providing ideas and allowing practitioners to go away and apply them in their own way, to their own setting.'

In the coming year Jabadao will be focusing on drawing more families into the programme, says Ms Greenland. 'Families provide the key to allowing children to move freely at home, and dads are particularly important for the part they play - which is often as a human playframe!'

Further information: Linda@jabadao.org or tel: 0113 236 3344.