Play is Physical
Play is physical, and creating mind body connections is a powerful developmental tool, as children grow. The children of C&C are often using their minds and their bodies to play, especially when they use their fine motor skills at work with wood, clay, paper, drawing tools, paint, water, and indoor blocks. Their gross motor skills are developed outdoors in the Yards with blocks and games that involve running, jumping, balancing, and many other activities that are both mentally and physically intertwined. Children’s physical and cognitive development is supported also in Rhythms. Long-time Rhythms teacher, Sylvia Miller, wrote of play in Rhythms:
“Dramatic play is one of the important parts of the Rhythms Program. It is the most natural thing in the world for children to imitate, to ‘be’ what’s been seen, heard, felt, imagined. Immersed in dramatic play that stems from a trip, book, a discussion, they become boats, people working on a building or in the street or in the firehouse; stemming from their own interest in and knowledge of animals, the sun, stars, space, wind, etc., they become one with their subject. This affords them deep satisfaction and gives them a sense of meaningful activity and well-being, for they are using and reshaping the materials of understood experience.”
“If you don’t understand human movement, you won’t really understand yourself or play. If you do, you will reap the benefits of play in your body, personal life and work situations. Learning about self movement structures an individual’s knowledge of the world - it is a way of knowing, and we actually, through movement and play, think in motion. For example the play-driven movement of leaping upward is a lesson about gravity as well as one’s body. And it lights up the brain and fosters learning. Innovation, flexibility, adaptability, resilience, have their roots in movement. The play-driven pleasures associated with exploratory body movements, rhythmic early speech (moving vocal cords), locomotor and rotational activity - are done for their own sake; pleasurable, and intrinsically playful. They sculpt the brain, and ready the player for the unexpected and unusual.”