Hankle and Roary love rolling around on the ground. Together with all their pre-school friends, they love wriggling and rolling, getting into all sorts of fun shapes. To them they are just messing around, having fun. Little do they know that all that rolling is also so good for developing their motor skills and great for brain development? Rolling is great for the following
- Crossing midline—as your child rolls, they reach across their body and they cross their midline. Crossing midline is a very important developmental skill. Crossing midline allows co-ordination of both sides of the body. Crossing midline is a fundamental motor skill for writing, tracking a moving ball, and reading and for lots of sports activities such as hitting a ball with a racket.
- Developing core muscles—– when rolling, your child will use their core muscles to move from back to tummy to back. When your child starts to roll, it is initially a fast flip (something like a pancake) with their body rigid. As their rolling skill develops, your child typically can roll in segments, first their head, and then either the hips or shoulders will follow until they have completed a roll. As your child gets stronger, they are able to put their hands above their head or down by their side and roll like a pencil which really works those tummy muscles. The slower your child rolls, the more those core muscles have to work. If you don’t believe me, try it yourself!
- Developing balance –—- Rolling on the floor is a balance activity, the action of the shoulders following head movement is a reflex activity that is very important for developing balance. The rolling action stimulates the balance centres in the head (The vestibular system) and helps your pre-schooler develop their sense of balance.
- Developing body awareness-—– Rolling on the floor works lots of muscles and your child gets lots of feedback from their body and how it is interacting with the ground. All this sensory information helps your child develop good body awareness and awareness of where they are in relation to the world around them (spatial awareness)
- Developing asymmetrical bilateral integration —– or a fancy way of saying two sides of the body working together. When bilateral integration is asymmetrical, both sides of the body are doing different actions to complete a skill. This is a fundamental development block for activities such as eating with knife and fork, tying shoe laces, writing, kicking a ball etc.
- Sorting out those muscle imbalances—– Your child may have a preference to roll to one side over the other . This may be due to hand dominance, and may lead to one side of their body being stronger and more co-ordinated than the other. Making sure your child rolls to both sides helps reduce this difference in muscle development between the two sides.
- Settling the giddy child —–Your child needs lots of movement, some days more than others. If your child is giddy, rolling on the ground is a great way to get lots of movement sensation to settle the wiggles and giddiness. Perfect for those wet and rainy days.
Dinoduo have lots of great fun rolling activities for you and your pre-school child.
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