Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/when-teaching-the-whole-child-remember-physical-fitness/5024276/
When I tell the early childhood professionals in my audiences that teaching the whole child means addressing physical and motor development, as well as social, emotional, and cognitive development, I can see the panic in their eyes. How, they wonder, are they going to fit one more thing into the day? Do I expect them to be motor development specialists, on top of everything else they do? And don’t motor skills just appear and take care of themselves?
The answer to the last question is: maturation takes care of only part of the process—the part that allows a child to execute most movement skills at an immature level.
What is meant by an immature level? This classification refers to a child who has not achieved a mature performance level for a given physical skill; it would be a matter of form, coordination, and so on. This actually can happen with such basic motor skills as walking and running. For instance, you may have observed a child who has not quite acquired the ability to move limbs in perfect opposition, or whose feet roll in, baby toes lifting off the ground.
The truth is, thanks to the mistaken notion that children ...