The Power of the Cartwheel
The Power of a Cartwheel
So often when working or raising children we focus so much of our time on their academic skills, milestones, behaviour and food. These are of course so important and often a priority but we can forget the significance of some other childhood skills.
Do you remember learning to ride a bike and the freedom you felt riding without any help? Learning to do the monkey bars? Swinging through the pain of blistered palms and aching shoulders? Or the cartwheel…
Being able to do a cartwheel or do the monkey bars and hula hoop is not just a skill, it can be social currency, a link with a pal or an in to a group. We all remember those peers at school who could do those things the fastest or the longest….
I was reminded of the significance of this skill this week, being able to (still) do a cartwheel gave me a link to the child I had the pleasure of spending some time with on a Monday afternoon, it also gave me an opportunity to show in real time how a skill can be broken down into steps and taught bit by bit.
Learning these skills can teach our children the basis for learning any skill, take a skill break it down into simpler steps and practice it regularly and with regular practice progress is made. The intrinsic desire to learn and progress is reinforced and a great model for teaching less motivating things.
If you can learn to do a cartwheel maybe we can us the same plan to learning your times tables, let’s do a little every day and see how you can learn….
In all goals for a term I let a child choose one thing that is important to them a challenge they would like for themselves- it does not need to be academic or related to the other goals but something they are keen to learn, we make sure we have everything we need accessible, build it into their time and make sure we practice together each and every session.
By the end of this term there are some expert ‘writing upside downers’, cartwheelers, dobble players, wordle for kids experts, flags of the world champions….
If you asked or offered what do you think your child would like to learn and how could you build that into their summer plans