Fundamental Movement Skills Pilot Reinforces That Movement Does Assist Children's Learning.

A two year pilot Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS) project is coming to an end and preliminary reports from researchers indicate that movement does enhance children's learning and development.

The objectives of the project carried out in three kindergartens (Don Buck, Massey & Birdwood) were to:
• Provide a range of experiences suitable for use in the daily programme
• Assist teachers, parents, caregivers to understand the link between mastery of FMS and learning
• Upskill teachers to ensure that they are confident in implementing and delivering FMS in the daily programme
• Encourage parents / caregivers to become involved and assist them to implement activities in the home environment

The approach taken involved a fairly intensive relationship with the centres where the Active Movement Advisor visited centres weekly to demonstrate activities to the teachers and the children centred around the basic FMS.
Basic FMS activities covered such things as :
• Locomotor skills e.g. walking, running, jumping, hopping
• Balance or stability skills
• Manipulative skills e.g. catching, throwing and kicking skills
• Body awareness skills e.g. knowing how big their bodies are and how they fit in space
From this the teachers were encouraged to provide these same activities daily throughout the rest of the play program. When children have plenty of practise at doing things in many different ways then it is more likely that this skill will become automatic, i.e. they can do the skill without thinking about how to do it!
This process is particularly important in the development of sports skills, e.g. prior to being able to kick a ball children need to be able to walk and run but they also need to be able to balance on one leg!
Many of the skills we teach involve moving both sides of the body at the same time, in different ways – this is called midline crossing. It is important that movement involving both sides of the body occurs daily as this helps to develop connections between our left and right brain. Strong connections in our brain assist with such things as numeracy and literacy.

As well as demonstrating to teachers and children the various activities that would encourage the specific FMS the teachers also underwent additional workshops that enabled them to understand the theory behind why movement was so important to children’s learning and development.

Teachers have become very confident in initiating further opportunities for developing FMS during the day and their learning stories demonstrate a large range of these opportunities. As part of the evaluation, assessments were carried out on 10 new children at each centre and after a term the skills of the children were once again tested. These assessments clearly indicate an improvement in the physical ability of the children to carry out the FMS.
Since the programme has been functioning in the kindergarten the teachers have reported an improvement not just in the FMS that the children have but also in their self esteem, ability to listen and to concentrate for longer periods of time, willingness to try new challenges and their ability to play more harmoniously together. All of these skills enhance further learning & development opportunities.

Through the use of home activity sheets that explain why children need to move and ensuring that the activities were not going to cost the parents/caregivers, there have been reports of parents initiating activity in the home environment. This is ensuring the whole family becomes involved thus creating further opportunities for learning.

The main factors that contributed to the success of the programme were:
• The teachers’ willingness to learn and try new ways.
• The programme ensured that teachers understood the reason why the various movements were important to children’s learning.
• The programme was flexible which ensured that learning opportunities were not lost e.g. if children were engrossed in a learning opportunity then the Active Movement Advisor incorporated movement experiences that would enhance that activity rather than replace that activity.
• The programme utilised equipment that centres already had or could be procured at reasonable prices.
• The programme was FUN!

Moving forward it is the intention to roll this programme out to other centres in the Waitakere region.