Physical development

“Physical activity is vital in children’s all-round development, enabling them to pursue happy, healthy and active lives. Gross and fine motor experiences develop incrementally throughout early childhood, starting with sensory explorations and the development of a child’s strength, co-ordination and positional awareness through tummy time, crawling and play movement with both objects and adults. By creating games and providing opportunities for play both indoors and outdoors, adults can support children to develop their core strength, stability, balance, spatial awareness, co-ordination and agility. Gross motor skills provide the foundation for developing healthy bodies and social and emotional well-being. Fine motor control and precision helps with hand-eye co-ordination, which is later linked to early literacy. Repeated and varied opportunities to explore and play with small world activities, puzzles, arts and crafts and the practice of using small tools, with feedback and support from adults, allow children to develop proficiency, control and confidence.” EYFS Statutory Framework, 2021.

INTENT: We want children to become aware of their bodies and the changes that occur during physical activity. We want children to be able to confidently and independently access sports equipment within the environment. We want children to develop the pre-writing skills and strength ready for writing and confidence to use a range of tools.   During the Reception year, we want to build on the work of families, nurseries and pre-schools to ensure all children develop healthy attitudes and the appropriate physical skills to succeed in their journey through school.

IMPLEMENTATION: Nursery children will have access to familiar equipment throughout the year, with adult support to start, to develop their core strength, their gross motor movements and strength and to start developing their fine motor movements. Certain approaches, such as Write Dance and REAL PE, follow a pattern for appropriate development. During the Reception year, children will have access to resources and opportunities that allow them to develop control over their movements. Indoors will lend itself to more fine motor activities/smaller movements and outside will lend itself to more gross motor activities/larger movements. Children’s gross motor skills will be further developed through PE guided from REAL PE. Specific children may be targeted for additional fine motor and gross motor support.

IMPACT:  Nursery children will be active and understand why physical activity is important to their well-being. They will enjoy being outside, creating games, taking risks and pushing their bodies to become stronger. We will monitor the impact to ensure children are ‘on track’ in the developmental age band 3 -4 years.

Children in Reception will show control over their movements, including how they control tools for writing, aiming to the physical skills to thrive as they pass through their school life.