Physical child coordination
Children learn important skills such as balancing, gross and fine motor skills, gravity and more through physical play activities that may involve climbing, crawling, kicking, swinging, hanging, balancing and more. Physical child coordination is developed through the promotion of activities that stimulate the above skills and include for instance, learning about gravity when dropping something or jumping etc.
Movement forms an integral part of early physical child coordination development. Children don’t learn everything at once and certainly not overnight. They learn in a sequence in the order of crawling, then walking and then running. Climbing and balancing activities also form an integral part of movement exercises.
How can outdoor play equipment help for physical child coordination development?
Outdoor play equipment available from Jungle Gym World that can be used to stimulate physical child coordination skills include for example:
- Swings – rubber, wooden, plastic seats and metal
- Slides – as part of jungle gyms or stand alone
- Barrels – plastic and metal drums
- Bridges – as part of jungle gyms or stand alone balance bridges
- Balancing beams – snake and straight beams
- See-saws for two to four children
- Ladders – rope, metal or wooden
- Fireman’s pole – as part of the jungle gym
- Monkey bars – horizontal and vertical tubular bars for climbing
- Hand rings – attached to chain and used to hang on
- Trapeze swings – horizontal bar attached to chain and used to hang on
- Fantasy play climbing structures such as bus, taxi, tractor, racing car, horse, plane etc.
- Cargo nets – rope nets attached to a jungle gym
- Wooden doll houses and tree houses
- Wooden jungle gyms – complete with several climbing and fantasy play equipment
- Steel jungle gyms – made from high quality steel and consisting of tubular bars, platforms, slides etc.
- Soccer and netball posts and rings – for ball throwing and kicking
- Double swings and merry go round swings – frame swings allowing two or more children to work together to create motion.
The above equipment can be used separately or as part of a larger structure on playgrounds or at home to help children build upper body strength, test their balancing skills, develop lower body strength, and learn physical child coordination etc.
Physical child coordination is for instance, taught when children need to walk over a bridge. Both distance and height come in play while the children also need to balance and make calculations. When children see-saw they learn timing, develop lower leg strength while developing dexterity and harmony in working together.
Kicking, catching or throwing a ball is an excellent exercise to develop hand eye or foot eye dexterity. The netball and soccer post can be added to your playground to encourage children to learn these skills in a fun way. When a ball is thrown or caught for instance, distance calculation, eye movement, timing and all the muscles in the body work together to complete the exercise successfully.
Neck and shoulder exercises such as the rolling of the head, turning the neck left or right and stretching, all form part of outdoor play and are done without children even realizing it when they play on the equipment.
Sliding down a fireman’s pole attached to one of our jungle gyms, is not only fun, but requires that every part of the body work together to complete the action. Apart from this, distance, speed and strength also play a role.
The tunnels and barrels teach children vital physical child coordination skills while they explore. Since crawling requires the use of both legs and hands in the correct sequence, children build extremely good dexterity skills. By calculating how many people can fit in a tunnel, mathematics skills are practiced. Direction and spatial orientation come in place when they have to decide whether they can turn around or have to move forward, and what direction to choose.
These skills may seem obvious, but without outdoor play and the right equipment, children fail to learn these vital skills, which are important for concentration, finding their way around, working together, writing, learning, reading, listening, mathematics and more.
Contact us at Jungle Gym World to help you select age appropriate outdoor play equipment for your playground, garden and according to your specific requirements. Don’t let your child fall behind because of a lack of physical child coordination activities. Give children the freedom to explore and to have fun while they learn. |
