4 Importance of supporting children

Physical skills play a critical role in supporting the overall development of children from a health and wellbeing perspective through to their learning and academic achievements.

Figure 6

The acquisition, rehearsing and refinement of movement skills should be an organic element of every child’s day, whether at home, nursery or school. You will consider these environments further in Weeks 4–6. In this section, you will continue to explore the term physical literacy and the benefits developing movement skills can provide. Watch the video below to explore the term. 

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SPEAKER 1:

OK, the clock's ticking. You have until I'm seven years old to make sure I can do this, this, and this. Obviously, I can already do this stuff because I get lots of help. But loads of kids don't and are really missing out.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It's called physical literacy. And we need you to help us as early as possible, so we can do all kinds of things when we're older. We'll try anything at this age, so now is the time to help us before it's too late. Because if we don't learn these basic skills now, we might just give up. We might never discover what we could have been good at and we might turn into couch potatoes.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

So fire us up. Inspire us. If you don't, you're asking us to settle for a life that's shorter and less healthy. And we don't want that, do we?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

End transcript: Video 1

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Video 1

In order to support a child’s development towards physical literacy, it is important that you are aware of the phases that children will move through. It is argued that being physically literate involves more than just being able to move effectively. In practice, it is also about children being provided with the opportunities to overcome movement challenges (Pot et al., 2017).

In the next section, you will explore the different types of skill and the development of FMS to support health, self-care, learning and the development of physical literacy.