On Lower Campus, we don’t believe that education is confined to the classroom. No matter what the subject or skill is, it can be taught and developed further at home too. A quality Physical Education programme is one that incorporates learning at school and at home. Through play or via completion of their homework, children continue to learn.
Physical Education is often the most neglected aspect of a child’s education outside of school. As parents and educators we must be vigilant when it comes to developing our children in a less formal setting. Gross and fine motor skills are vital for any child’s development and coincides with the many benefits you will see through mental and emotional wellness too. We, at Lower Campus, encourage all parents to help their children’s physical and mental development through participating in sports outside of school hours.
Our focus this year during Term One is for students to develop the necessary gross motor skills in order to enable them to participate in group games with more confidence. We have particularly focused on ball skills for a number of year groups. This is something you can easily help develop at home too. Through experiential learning, ball skills can be developed independently because feedback can be given instantly to the children. To begin with, you can help by guiding and modelling the skill for your child. Gradually decrease your level of involvement and allow your child to practise or play on their own. Children will see that the ball does not bounce in the way that they wanted it. They can therefore try a number of different ways to figure out how to bounce the ball correctly or for it to go in the direction that they want. Using different sized balls or balls with different surfaces and textures can also be helpful for developing this skill.
Alongside ball skills, we have been focusing on balancing and rolling this term. We have done this through a variety of challenging obstacle courses that enable the children to develop their skills independently, with guidance mainly being given for more difficult tasks. We believe that it is important that your child receives a wide range of active learning experiences with different levels of independence. We seek to incorporate this across Lower Campus as a whole and not just in a P.E context.
By David Knape,
Lower Primary PE and Newsletter Coordinator
