More on Kinesthetic Education

The 4 day Monkey Gym workshop that I was part of finished up this evening. I hope the final two days were as fun and educational as the two that I was a part of.  

One truly fucked up thing I heard whilst at the Monkey Gym workshop (last Friday and Saturday), was that some schools in New South Wales have actually banned running and children physically contacting each other (!!).  This is insanity. Banning play is insanity. Quite literally; this will breed neurotic, mentally and physically underdeveloped human 'adults' (just like the ones arguing it should be banned, presumably). 

Just when you think our kinesthetically deprived society can't get any more repressed.. I deeply believe that this era of history is going to seem like a second dark ages, in many respects, to future historians (if we make it to the future). 

Coupled with the disturbing metal fences I saw popping up around schools in the ACT before I left Canberra..  what do you think raising children inside a big cage does for their patterning and social conditioning (or perhaps it is an apt metaphor?). 

So rant over for now.  There are lots of cool things you can do (positively) for your own children's kinesthetic and movement development - such as making obstacle courses at home!  I've been building obstacle courses for my 13 month old daughter (in our living area), out of mattresses; yoga bolsters and cushions.  She loves climbing, rolling and bending over all them.  She even moves the bolsters around, and plays with them of her own accord. 

Luckily, too, there are a lot of great parks to take my daughter to around the local area here.  Some of the new 'spider web' style towers and spheres are really well designed and fun to play on (for my too!). 

Lucky too, that I have met a number of other people passionate about re-instating natural movement and play into children's education.