Articles - Physical Development

This series of articles on early development has now discussed emotions and relationships together with information about the brain and the links between them. In this article, I want to share with you some thoughts and information about how our bodily development. This topic, as with all aspects of development, embraces the four EYFS principles. Understanding the strengths and areas of difficulty of the children in your care will reinforce the uniqueness of each child. Your attitude towards their physical well being will support the principle of positive relationships. Consideration of how best to support their growth and development will enhance your thinking about an ‘enabling environment’ and all these will influence their learning.

When we consider physical development, we may find that we tend to think about it in terms of a child’s gross and fine motor development, although we may also notice how they are actually growing. The current concerns about an ‘epidemic’ of obesity will, more recently, have caused us to also stop and think about a child’s general weight. Growth and weight will also influence a child’s capacity for movement and we cannot separate out our understanding of physical development and its relationship with our ability to move. This is especially true if we remember that movement combined with information from the senses are the baby’s first ways of communicating with the world.

Physical development, therefore, involves us thinking about:

• Growth of the whole body – head, neck, trunk, arms and legs, hands and feet - height and weight
• The ‘body’ senses
• The growth, strength and co-ordination of our muscles and joints
• The body and sensory ‘maps’ in our brain

All these are the ‘language’ of the body and so let us have a look at each of the above in turn.