Balance

Brain Gym and wake me up exercises

EY2 students love our short wake up exercises. Each morning after our morning circle the children are invited to participate in a selection of 3-5 exercise before we starting our morning centers. 

With a combination of cardio, i.e., jumping jacks, yoga poses, and specific brain gymnastics, they get ready to start their day. During this time we also emphasise the importance of drinking water and how water is the 'food' for our brain. 

In addition all EY2 students participate once a week in a perceptual motor session. Here an excerpt from this website explaining the 'Why?' it's important.

Why Do Kids Need Perceptual-Motor Experiences?

Perceptual-motor skills allow sensory information to be successfully obtained and understood with appropriate reaction. Perceptual deals with obtaining information and motor refers to the outcome of movement. Thus perceptual-motor activities require children to use their brain and body together to accomplish tasks—for example, walking on a balance beam while reciting the alphabet.

Think about it: To perform well in school, children must do many things that require their mind and muscles to work together as a team. In fact, all communication skills—reading, writing, speaking, and gesturing—are motor-based abilities. We often think of them strictly as academic skills, but, for example, in learning to write, a child must not only know the alphabet and understand how words are formed by combining letters but also translate that knowledge into action by gripping, moving, and stabilizing a pencil while using perception (sight) to adjust her or his movements in order to create the correct pattern. In order for the child to learn, the mind and the body must work together.

You can read more detail here.