Large motor skills – how to develop it with Korbo Blocks?
Motor skill is a concept that describes the level of a child's motor development. We have already learned in previous post what fine motor skill is and how KORBO Blocks help in its development. It's time for the 2nd type of motor skills – the so-called gross motor skills.
What does this term hide?
Gross motor skills are all voluminous movements in which our whole body or a significant part of it is involved: e.g. arms and legs. So it is easy to immediately associate that gross motor skills are: in. walking, running, cycling, swimming, crawling, jumping. To put it simply, gross motor activity is any daily motor activity of a child that develops its nervous system, and thus the coordination of body movements and concentration of attention. It is the child's physical activity, i.e. gross motor skills, that most strongly influences the development of fine motor skills! If the child is physically agile, tries various physical activities and has no difficulty exercising, then most likely his fingers and hands will be well-functioning as well.
KORBO blocks can support the development of not only small but also large motor skills. For example, the aforementioned building of a tower with bricks exercises both types of motor skills. To put one block on top of another, the child must use force from the center of the body. When he moves the brick from one place in the room to place it on the tower in another part, he also practices gross motor skills! In addition, blocks can be used during a mid-school break or physical education classes (e.g. lie on your back, place the block on your stomach, lift your body up so that the block does not fall). Another idea is to skateboard (on your stomach, pushing yourself only with your hands, or in a sitting position, pulling your hands on the rope) and transfer the blocks from the box in one part of the room to the platform in the other. In this way, you can create great buildings according to a pattern or your own idea, e.g. in pairs or teams of several people. A great idea for practicing teamwork, i.e. TEAMBUILDING is to swap positions with buildings after 5 or 10 minutes. Then we continue to construct a building that was started by another group.
You can also create buildings with KORBO in motion: on a swing, on a moving disk. This is great for your children's balance exercise. It's also a great idea to build obstacle courses for kids! We can then move blocks from place to place, count them during tasks, arrange a relay race with a block (each team can receive blocks of a different color). It is also worth using the possibility of arranging sequences – 4 different physical exercises are 4 KORBO blocks (e.g. jumps, run from start to finish, squats and "swallow"). You can also successfully encode elements of exercises in football, basketball, acrobatics, dance, or even hopscotch and rubber.
KORBO blocks are an ally of every child, especially in times when children sit more than move!