Come Play!

Chapter I

Movement, Play, Games and Sports

Movement activities, play, games and sport. What is the difference?

Movement activities are games, actions or activities that encourage motor development and the building of gross and fine motor coordination.

Play, in its purest form is unstructured physical activity. Children climbing trees, playing with their dolls, or making mud pies are play activities.

Games are playful activities involving more than one person. It has a minimal set of rules, some equipment and coaching, and may be cooperative or competitive. Hide and seek, tag and storm the castle are games involving some strategy, running and chasing.

Sport is a structured form of physical activity, pertaining to an individual’s skills and performance. They can be recreational or competitive, with teams, coaches and the keeping of scores. Basketball, rugby, soccer and volleyball are such examples.

This book is about movement activities and games: movement activities that nurture growing bodies, and games that are age appropriate and meet the developmental needs of the growing child.

Why is Movement important?

The body is the vehicle through which we express ourselves, in movement, gestures, stance or speech. Movement is more than just the moving of bones, joints and muscles. When one part moves, the body as a whole responds²; a seamless integration of a living body, with many systems working in harmony.

The Human Body was Designed for Moving

From an anatomical perspective, the human body was designed for moving. The average human musculoskeletal system is made up of 206 bones, 360 joints (point of attachment between two bones) over 600 muscles, three types of cartilage (soft, gel like padding between bones that protect joints and aid movement), over 4000 tendons (tissues connecting muscle to bone), 900 ligaments (tissues connecting bone to bone) and other connective tissues.

Our skeletal muscles, all 639 of them, are like a kind of elastic tissue, working in pairs to move body parts by pulling on the bones they are attached to. One in a pair pulls (contracts) to move a bone or bend a joint while the other relaxes, and then they reverse roles to bring the muscle back to its original position.

Together, the muscular and skeletal systems work to move the body as well as provide form and support for the organs. Healthy muscles drive human movement, and movement in turn lubricates the body and preserves muscle quality. Lack of quality movement affects joint mobility, causing stiffness, limited range of motion and joint degeneration, further limiting movement. In other words, we use it or we lose it.

The Neuromuscular System

Muscles may consist of thousands, or tens of thousands, of small muscle fibres, and a muscle’s strength depends mainly on how many fibres are present. Specialised fibres, called muscle spindles, found in the belly of muscles, act as proprioceptors, as they register muscle lengthening and the rate of the change in muscle length.

There are over six trillion muscle fibres in the human body, each commanded by one of the seven trillion nerves that transmit signals between the brain, spinal cord, and the rest of the body. They control the skeletal muscles, interpret sensory information, and coordinate the activities of the body.

The Brain

The brain is like the master controller. It responds to stimulation from the environment by creating neural pathways to develop new skills and abilities. Within the cortex of the brain are billions of tiny nerve cells that connect and communicate with other cells throughout the body, in a complicated network. These cells continue to develop, adapt and modify its neural connections to grow new brain cells.

The Muscle and Brain Connection

Neuroscientific evidence show that the same areas of the brain are activated when learning as when moving³. Every movement the body makes, whether it is learning to crawl, walk or write, learning a new language or playing an instrument, provides sensory information for the brain to process, adapt to and form new neural pathways, which in turn enhances cognitive functioning.

The brain’s ability to change and grow stronger the more we use it, has led to the brain being compared to a muscle – the more you use it, the stronger it gets.

Movement and Development

Many studies have linked movement to child development and learning, in areas such as memory, perception, language, attention, behaviour emotion and decision making⁴.

Rudolf Steiner⁵ the originator of Waldorf Education, names the three major developmental milestones in early childhood as walking, speaking and thinking. The process goes in two ways, according to the principles of cephalo-caudal (from head to foot) and proximo-distal (centre to periphery, i.e. the fingers and toes).

From head to foot, the young child learns to master an array of movement patterns, initially unskilled and uncoordinated, towards a gradual control of their muscles in order to focus their eyes, lift their head, grasp objects, crawl, sit, stand, balance and then walk.

Their fine motor control develops from the centre out, from the gross towards dexterity of fingers and toes. This also includes the subtle development of the speech mechanism from the larynx to the lips, which culminates in speech.

Interwoven with motor development is sensory development, which also follows a foundational progression, beginning with awareness of the bodily kinaesthetic senses to the perceptual senses. A certain level of motor and sensory maturity is needed before the child is considered ready for formal learning in school.

The Sensory Integration System

We become aware of our world by way of sensations (detecting sensory information) and perception (the integration, interpretation and conscious experience of these sensations). We engage with the world when we act on this information through our movements.

Ayres⁶ describes sensory integration as the organisation of sensations; of putting together all the senses that stream into the human body into a coherent experience. Imagine peeling and eating an orange, and all the sensory information coming through our eyes, nose, mouth, skin, fingers, muscles and joints, working together to bring us this experience of eating an orange.

Most of us are familiar with the five senses through which we process information: touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing. Modern science has expanded this list to include proprioception (the perception or awareness of the position and movement of the body), vestibular (balance and motion) and interoception (how our body tells our brain what is going on inside our body).

Yet, in 1909, Rudolf Steiner proposed a way of looking at human development through the spectrum of the twelve senses⁷ (touch, life, movement, balance, smell, taste, sight, warmth, hearing, language, thought, and ego). The first four senses relate to the physical or Willing aspect of the human being. They lay the foundation for all other senses, particularly the four higher or Thinking parts of the human being. Mediating between these two polarities are the middle senses that relate to the Feeling realm of the human being.

This pedagogy of educating the whole person through the Hands (Willing), Heart (Feeling) and Head (Thinking) has implications for education and is what guides much of the resources described in this book.

The Pedagogy of the Twelve Senses

These senses are ‘helpers’ of perception, helping us perceive and make meaningful our sensory experience. A sense does not just work on its own, but in concert with all other senses, and each is related to a polar opposite sense.

Hence while a movement curriculum works primarily through the physical senses, it affects all other senses, in particular the higher senses. In other words, to reach the thinking (Head), we need to work through the physical (Hands), with the feeling realm (Heart) acting as the bridge.

This view of the twelve senses has implications for teaching and gives insight to what is unfolding in a child’s physical, cognitive, emotional and spiritual development. A healthy development of these senses contributes to a healthy development of the human being⁸. A healthy movement curriculum works strongly through the physical senses to influence the physical and higher order cognitive senses.

1. The Sense of Touch

The sense of Touch is the body’s inner experience of contact with the environment. We experience ourselves inwardly by becoming aware of a boundary, a sense of where we begin and end, and where another person begins. The skin, the largest organ of the human body, is the organ for the sense of touch. Nerve endings below the skin relay messages to the brain to register a sensation.

Newborns are born with this capacity, and they learn about their environment through touching and feeling. The sense of Touch teaches the child where their boundaries are, and is a bridge connecting the individual to the outside world. It can be nurtured with loving and soothing connection or it can be distorted by abuse (physical, verbal or sexual) or neglect.

A healthy development gives a sense of security as well as the ability to understand fear. A balance has to be struck between the child experiencing fear and learning to overcome it, to sheltering the child from any form of fear whatsoever. The moral value of games allows children to experience this fear in a safe and secure way.

The opposite to the sense of Touch is the sense of Ego or the ‘I’ sense. A healthy sense of Touch gives us the ability to perceive the I of another person. This is especially important in social interaction and interpersonal relationships.

2. The Sense of Life (Wellbeing)

The organ for perceiving the sense of Life is the autonomous nervous system, (sympathetic and parasympathetic). It is attuned to all the movement and internal activities of the life body and is the body’s sensation of well-being, our etheric life force. The sense of Life functions like a mirror of our internal activity⁹. We often take it for granted and only become aware of it when we are in physical discomfort.

This sense is functional at birth. When contented, the infant is peaceful and relaxed, feeling secure and comfortable. When in discomfort, the infant cries to alert their caregiver to their needs.

This sense is influenced by the rhythm and routine of our daily experience, of how we are cared for, loved, dressed, fed or nurtured. Developing this sense is about finding a balance between letting it flourish and mature totally protected and allowing the child to sense discomfort and pain.

The lesson from the sense of Life it that through pain and discomfort, we learn restraint. In movement and games, the child comes to be aware of their abilities and limitations. They learn to be patient, to take turns, to give and to receive.

The opposite to the sense of Life is the sense of Thought (concept), the ability to be open to another’s point of view. How can one have empathy and compassion for another if one is closed to other viewpoints except our own?

3. The Sense of Movement (Self-movement)

The sense of Movement is our ability to perceive our body’s movements and posture. From the gross (walking, running) and the fine (sewing, writing) to the subtle (blink of an eye), we express ourselves through our bodies. The sense organ is in our muscles and the movement organisation, which include the muscle spindles, motor endplates, tendons and ligaments. When we move, even the smallest movement, our entire body is involved.

Muscular movement is the expression of nervous system activity. While children are born with this capacity to move, the organs of movement are not yet mature. Its maturity is co-dependent on that of the nervous system (a requirement for higher order thought processes), which is best effected by muscular movement.

Children thus grow through movement: crawling, walking, running and imitating the world around them, initially a little clumsy and uncoordinated, then with increasing intent and purpose. This is seen in the rhythm of moving from one activity to the next.

It is the inner movement, that of our intent or purpose that directs our outer movements. Limiting or distorting healthy movement affect us on a soul level, that of a sense of purpose. The ability to control our movements gives us a sense of freedom. A poor sense of movement is like a cramping of this freedom, a powerlessness.

In movement and games, children learn to use and coordinate their movements in space and time. This metamorphoses into a healthy sense of Language, the art of communication. Effective communication is more than mere words, it is an art and skill necessary for a successful living.

4. The Sense of Balance

The sense of Balance is how we relate to the world, and how we orient ourselves to the three-dimensional space around us to maintain our upright balance without falling over every time we move. The main organ of our balance (the vestibular system) is the ear, particularly the semi-circular canals in the inner ear, which are oriented at 90° to each other, thus in three dimensions of space. Sensors in our skin, joints and muscles also help us maintain our balance and coordination.

The spatial position of the young infant is horizontal. Through exercising the sense of movement and the maturation of the central nervous system, the child learns to hold their head up, sit up freely, pull themselves upright, walk, run, turn, move forward, backward and sideways. They learn to conquer gravity and space, and find a harmonious coexistence between the two to maintain balance.

On the soul level, our upright stance is our point of reference; how we are able express who we are as a person, and how we are then able to connect to the world.

In movement and games, the child learns to explore and conquer the space around them, learning to move freely in the three dimensions of space. Is it any wonder that the polar opposite of the sense of Balance is the sense of Hearing, the ability to be still in order to hear the intent behind the tones?

5. The Sense of Smell

The sense of Smell is how we attune to our environment, much of which happens on an unconsciousness level. It develops between the ages of three and nine, after which children are able to relate to the world of odours. Sensory receptors in our nose can distinguish at least one trillion different odours. Free nerve endings in the nasal mucosa have a short and direct route to parts of the brain involved in learning and memory.

This means that we can be influenced or swayed by smells because of their ability to conjure up memories. Smell is innately related to our instinct, judgment and drive. Like little radars, our noses ‘sniff’ things out. If something does not feel right, we sense or ‘smell trouble’ or ‘smell a rat’, or that something ‘smells fishy’, or simply that it ‘stinks’.

To have a ‘good nose’ for something is to have the capacity of discernment, for what is morally right or wrong, for what is worthwhile and good. A scent, then, invokes judgment, and children quickly learn to trust their nose, sniffing out the inner qualities of people or situations.

Games