The weather has been wonderful, the rain has (in the main) kept off and the garden is dry Get out the ball pool!!
A little while ago Charlotte came to the nursery having bought a huge amount of soft play equipment including a 1.5m ball pool, it has been fantastic to provide the children with a way to develop their physical motor skills whilst having a soft landing at the end! Creating different spaces for children to push themselves physically means that we have to be aware how to create rules to manage them. One of the best ways is to let the children choose themselves and so self-govern the space; saying "watch out!", looking for the space, thinking about children who might be under the balls...
And it's not just the ball pool getting the use
"look how high I can jump!"
"I did a forward roll!"
Watching children push themselves and testing how far their confidence will let them go has been mentioned before, when I watch our children I consider four stages of development
Unconscious incompetence: I don't know what I can't do
Conscious incompetence: I know what I can't do
Conscious competence: I can do it but I need to concentrate
Unconscious competence: I can do it
It's always wonderful to look back at the pictures and see the concentration on the faces of children who are very much in the "conscious competence" stage of their development, it's only after they feel fully confident with the processes of jumping and landing do we see the next stage: looking at the camera, smiling in mid-air, doing rolls and spins into the pool, helping others out and showing them how do jump in. And the best thing is that it's completely natural.
