Description
Fifty-five per cent of parents admit they never read to their child. Toddlers watch 4.5 hours of TV daily. More children are obese, enter school developmentally delayed and need special education. So Sally Goddard Blythe draws on neuroscience to unpack the wisdom of nursery rhymes, playing traditional games and fairy stories for healthy child development. She explains why movement matters and how games develop children’s skills at different stages of development. She offers a starter kit of stories, action games, songs and rhymes.
Author
Sally Goddard Blythe is Director of the Institute for Neuro-Physiological Psychology. She researches the relationship between physical development and learning. Her remedial programmes help transform children’s learning through movement.
Her widely translated books include The Well Balanced Child, Movement: Your Child’s First Language and Reflexes, Movement, Learning & Behaviour from Hawthorn Press, and Attention Balance and Coordination, The ABC of Learning Success.
“Sally Goddard Blythe is an inspiration to the growing number of people who see a genuinely ‘holistic developmental’ perspective as essential to understanding and supporting young children. Here, you will find the simple virtues of ‘music and movement’ and child-raising wisdom allied with the latest neuroscientific insights to show just why the ‘old-fashioned’, pre-technological ways often had it right all along.” —Dr Richard House, Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, Roehampton University
The Genius of Natural Childhood in the Media
Parents who skip over classic fairy tales and nursery rhymes because they are ‘too frightening’ or politically incorrect should think again. Read the Telegraph article here.
Singing to children may help development of language skills. Read the Guardian article here.
Childcarers are divided over rough and tumble play, with some nurseries banning wrestling and others embracing it. The latter approach may be the wiser. Read the Nursery World article here.
A growing body of evidence suggests that there is a rise in the number of children starting school with immature motor skills, which is hindering their ability to learn. ‘Every parent needs to know the importance of movement to children’s development,’ Sally Goddard Blythe says. ‘We’re in danger of turning our babies into couch potatoes.’ Read the Nursery World article here.
Creative play and story telling is essential for healthy development. Read the Telegraph article on the benefits of reading fairy tales to children here.
Why movement and play are essential ingredients to healthy brain development – article in First Steps magazine, Australia.
