Creating and thinking critically

The 2012 Early Education Conference in Greenwich, ‘Life in Every Limb’, explored the need to promote physical development as a fundamental aspect of child development with passion and enthusiasm. This was in addition to the aim of raising well-being. The majority of early years practitioners and parents acknowledge the links between physical activity and health. However it is essential that we are all reminded of the importance of movement and physical development in terms of the environment, risk taking, imagination, creativity and the freedom that children need in order to move and express themselves. With creating and thinking critically identified in the new Early Years framework as a characteristic of effective teaching and learning, it is important for practitioners to consider the need for children to have and develop their own ideas, make connections and develop strategies to support their learning. This chapter discusses how practitioners can support children to think creatively using their whole bodies, making reference to the movement play specialists JABADAO. This child-led movement play involving babies and young children makes a significant contribution to raising well-being in addition to supporting learning and development across all areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage. Children’s critical thinking in relation to physical development involves their enjoyment in spontaneous movement; encouraging children to discover and explore their environment through physical encounters stimulates cognitive involvement. The chapter will draw on the work of Montessori and the Reggio Emilia approach to early years education: that of valuing the environment and encouraging young children to engage physically with their world. Montessori recognised movement as a particularly sensitive aspect of a child’s development, describing children’s hands as ‘the instruments of their brains’. The more recent work of Sally Goddard Blythe describes movement as a child’s first language and argues that young children ‘learn with their bodies before they learn with their minds’.2 Goddard

Blythe recognises the importance of physical development from birth, proposing that children who experience an incomplete transition between the primary reflexes to early motor development can exhibit a number of later problems. She maintains that a healthy mind is created by the brain and the body operating together in harmony, and that this requires repeated physical experiences. Movement therefore is both the primary motivator and medium through which learning and brain development takes place.