The A, B, Cs of physical activity, play and motor learning

A substantial amount of international research has documented children’s need for explorative, experiential and challenging physical play. Through versatile and all-round varieties of play forms and play environments children will develop basic movement skills and learn how to master their body in different and challenging situations. Children’s play is motivated through curiosity and fantasy of exploring the environment and this allows them to master their own bodies and learn to move in a variety of different ways. This symposium will consider how the abilities of: agility, balance and coordination (‘the A,B,Cs’) are stimulated and developed through different and open-ended affordances of play within four different European countries. The purpose of this is to share how the same early movement abilities (A,B,Cs), are developed according to context, culture and environment. The four countries have been chosen as their natural or adapted environments are varied, but they are all used to enhance and help the children to explore, engage in movement that develop their A,B,Cs. Different kind of A,B,C’s will be demonstrated: Finland through focusing on the use of snow and ice. Belgium through focusing on the use of water and aquatic activities, using the specific CEReKi approach. Norway through focusing on the use of the woods and forest environments and England through the use of beach, sand and indoor environments. The use of tools and equipment to help support the children’s development will be examined as well as the role of the teacher to help aid the early movement skills within each different natural or adapted environment. Photography and illustrations will demonstrate how the A,B,C’s are developed differently within each country. Paper one - Finnish perspective The purpose of this presentation is to concretize affordances of Finnish nature during winter – ice and snow. Ice is fascinating slippery surface. It challenge children’s balance and agility constantly, when they are moving or playing on the ice. Children need to activate all their neuro-muscular systems to coordinate their body limbs to keep their balance. Controlling their bodies in different postures while standing or moving helps motivate their play. Therefore, moving on the ice can be seen as playing with own body and trying to keep the balance. Beautiful white snow is free mattress for children: children are attracted to jump, run, throw, dive, cave, lay, roll, spin and use their creativity and desire to make whatever they imagine to try. These physical activities are excellent stimulation for the movement. Moving in the snow slows down children’s movements and they need to use more strength than without snow. Nordic children are lucky to have attractive winter affordances, ice and snow to tempt them physically active play. Challenging surfaces and materials demand concentration, which is prerequisite for development of physical abilities and motor coordination. The seasonal variation with changing affordances may be one reason causing good motor competence of Nordic children. Paper two - Belgium's perspective The aquatic environment is generally for children a source of pleasure and fulfilment. However, water presents physical characteristics for which the humans are not fundamentally constituted. The ability to move in the water is governed by different rules that the child must appropriates in a progressive way. For example the child has to move from the vertical position to the horizontal position in water. Propulsion uses more the upper limbs than the lower limbs. Water resistance changes the speed of segmental movements and breath must be controlled. The aquatic environment should be discovered in a suitable, progressive and fun way. This is what is proposed with the CEReKi original water familiarization method developed in Belgium. The purpose of this presentation is to illustrate how an original arrangement can stimulate the agility, balance and coordination (ABC’s) of the child in the water through active play. Specially adapted equipment is introduced into the pool to provide a stimulating environment, allowing children to evolve according to their desire and level. This presentation will show how a synthetic fibre net, bars, floats, a metal cage or slides can be used to develop children's aquatic ABC’s in an adapted and affording environment. Paper three - Norwegian perspective Children learn movements and gain bodily experiences by exploring different environments. Through bodily experiences, children explore details and quality of movements such as balance, coordination, speed, agility, force and endurance Children develop perceptual-motor skills through natural spontaneous interaction with the environment. The materiality of the environment affords challenges and experiences that promote motor learning and the children respond by exploring, discovering and face the challenges by mastering perceptual motor skills in context with the environment. This presentation will demonstrate how children’s physical play is stimulated and developed through different and open-ended affordances of play “How to encourage explorative and problem-solving play” “How do landscapes promote motor learning and mastering of bodily competence?” Approaches: * Children’s play and learning through experience will be demonstrated through a video of a natural play space * Open-ended affordances of landscapes will be presented Literature and case studies showing the contextual environment- child relationship in learning fundamental motor skills will be discussed. Multifunctional and challenging environments seem to have promotive effect on children’s physical and explorative play and should therefore be encouraged as a pedagogical approach in motor learning. Paper four - English perspective. Nowhere within the UK is further than 70 miles (113 kilometres) from the coast, and England is made up of 2728 miles (4,422 km) of coastline. The coastline has a variety of natural textures from flat sandy dunes to steep white cliffs such as those found at Dover. The beach and coastline offers English children an almost Jurassic exploration, as it is the place that is full of beauty, history and fossils, with many schools having weekly or daily ‘beach school’ in which the children, learn, explore and play on the beach environment. The photographs and illustrations provided in the paper will show how the abilities of agility, balance and coordination are developed through a variety of ways using the sand and beach environments. For example the fine and coarse sand are ideal for sensory touch development with children from very young age. Both the actual outdoor environments of the beach and rock pools as well as sand pits, sand boxes and water boxes within indoor settings are used to develop physical curiosity, through hiding objects that the children have to use fine motor skills to dig out, to use pincers to help develop their grasping, reaching and coordination skills

General stability criterion of inviscid parallel flow

A more restrictively general stability criterion of two-dimensional inviscid parallel flow is obtained analytically. First, a sufficient criterion for stability is found as either $-\mu_1<\frac{U''}{U-U_s}<0$ or $0<\frac{U''}{U-U_s}$ in the flow, where $U_s$ is the velocity at inflection point, $\mu_1$ is the eigenvalue of Poincar\'{e}'s problem. Second, this criterion is generalized to barotropic geophysical flows in $\beta$ plane. Based on the criteria, the flows are are divided into different categories of stable flows, which may simplify the further investigations. And the connections between present criteria and Arnol'd's nonlinear criteria are discussed. These results extend the former criteria obtained by Rayleigh, Tollmien and Fj{\o}rtoft and would intrigue future research on the mechanism of hydrodynamic instability.Comment: Revtex4, 4 pages, 2 figures, extends the first part of physics/0512208, Accepted, to be continue

Modeling Kelvin wave cascades in superfluid helium

We study two different types of simplified models for Kelvin wave turbulence on quantized vortex lines in superfluids near zero temperature. Our first model is obtained from a truncated expansion of the Local Induction Approximation (Truncated-LIA) and it is shown to possess the same scalings and the essential behaviour as the full Biot-Savart model, being much simpler than the later and, therefore, more amenable to theoretical and numerical investigations. The Truncated-LIA model supports six-wave interactions and dual cascades, which are clearly demonstrated via the direct numerical simulation of this model in the present paper. In particular, our simulations confirm presence of the weak turbulence regime and the theoretically predicted spectra for the direct energy cascade and the inverse wave action cascade. The second type of model we study, the Differential Approximation Model (DAM), takes a further drastic simplification by assuming locality of interactions in k-space via using a differential closure that preserves the main scalings of the Kelvin wave dynamics. DAMs are even more amenable to study and they form a useful tool by providing simple analytical solutions in the cases when extra physical effects are present, e.g. forcing by reconnections, friction dissipation and phonon radiation. We study these models numerically and test their theoretical predictions, in particular the formation of the stationary spectra, and closeness of numerics for the higher-order DAM to the analytical predictions for the lower-order DAM

Evaluation of a surfing programme designed to increase personal well-being and connectedness to the natural environment among ‘at risk’ young people

Outdoor activities can be an important complement to classroom learning, especially for children/young people excluded, or at risk of exclusion, from mainstream schooling. The current research explored the impact of a 12-week surfing programme among such a group in the UK. Pre-post data on physiological health (heart rate (HR)/blood pressure), self-reported well-being (life and domain satisfaction), connectedness (e.g. to nature, school), environmental awareness (e.g. role of sand dunes) and teacher evaluations (e.g. behaviour) were collected. Results found significant drops in HR (suggesting improved fitness), increased satisfaction with appearance, more positive attitudes towards school and friendships, greater environmental awareness and more positive teacher evaluations, post-intervention. A lack of findings in other domains suggests these results were not due to participants simply conforming to demand characteristics. Overall, the results suggest that surfing interventions could have important benefits for vulnerable young people who struggle with mainstream schooling. The need for future research using control groups and longer term follow-up is discussed

How does the built environment affect teenagers (aged 13–14) physical activity and fitness? A cross-sectional analysis of the ACTIVE Project

Built environments have been cited as important facilitators of activity and research using geographic information systems (GIS) has emerged as a novel approach in exploring environmental determinants. The Active Children Through Individual Vouchers Evaluation Project used GIS to conduct a cross-sectional analysis of how teenager's (aged 13-14) environments impacted on their amount of activity and influences fitness. The ACTIVE Project recruited 270 participants aged 13-14 (year 9) from 7 secondary schools in south Wales, UK. Demographic data and objective measures of accelerometery and fitness were collected from each participant between September and December 2016. Objective data was mapped in a GIS alongside datasets relating to activity provision, active travel routes, public transport stops, main roads and natural resources. This study shows that fitness and physical activity are not correlated. Teenagers who had higher levels of activity also had higher levels of sedentary time/inactivity. Teenagers showed higher amounts of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity if their homes were closer to public transport. However, they were also more active if their schools were further away from public transport and natural resources. Teenagers were fitter if schools were closer to natural resources. Sedentary behaviour, fitness and activity do not cluster in the same teenagers. Policymakers/planning committees need to consider this when designing teenage friendly environments. Access to public transport, active travel, green space and activities that teenagers want, and need could make a significant difference to teenage health

Laying the foundations for physical literacy in Wales: the contribution of the Foundation Phase to the development of physical literacy

ABSTRACT Background: The Foundation Phase in Wales is a play-based curriculum for pupils aged 3–7 years old. Children learn through more holistic areas of learning in place of traditional subjects. As such, the subject of physical education in its traditional form no longer exists for pupils under the age of 7 in Wales. In light of the role of physical education in developing physical literacy and in particular the importance of this age group for laying the foundations of movement for lifelong engagement in physical activity, the disappearance of physical education from the curriculum could be deemed to be a concern. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the Foundation Phase as a naturalistic intervention and examine its contribution to the development of physical literacy. Participants and setting: Participants included year 1 pupils (N = 49) aged 5 and 6 from two schools in contrasting locations. A smaller group within each class was selected through purposive sampling for the repeated measures assessments (N = 18). Research design and methods: A complementarity mixed-method design combined quantitative and qualitative methods to study the Foundation Phase as a naturalistic intervention. Quantitative data were generated with the Test of Gross Motor Development-2 administered to the sample group of children from both schools as a quasi-repeated measure, the physical competence subscale of the Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance and the Leuven Involvement Scale for Young Children. Qualitative data were generated throughout the study from the analysis of video and field notes through participant observation. Data from the mixed methods were analysed through complementarity to give a rich insight into pupils’ progress and experiences in relation to physical literacy. Results: Overall analysis of the data from TGMD-2 showed significant improvements in the Gross Motor Quotient and Locomotor skills from T1 to T3, but no significant improvement in object control. Data from qualitative methods were analysed to explore processes that may account for these findings. Video and field notes complement the quantitative data highlighting that children were developing their locomotor skills in many aspects of their learning. Observations using the Leuven Involvement Scale indicated that children had high levels of involvement in their learning and apparent in video and field notes was pupils’ motivation for movement. Paired sample t-tests (N = 18) conducted on the Harter and Pike perceived physical competence sixitem score subscales (T1 and T3) indicated a significant difference in the mean perceived physical competence scores on the six-item scale between T1and T3. Qualitative data explored pupils’ confidence for movement in many areas of learning. Conclusion: The combination of quantitative and qualitative data indicates that the Foundation Phase is an early childhood curriculum that lays the foundations of physical literacy with the exception of aspects of the physical competence, specifically object control skills. Although these skills only contribute to psychomotor aspects of physical literacy they are strongly associated with later engagement in physical activity. The development of specific physical skills such as object control skills may need more specialist input with early childhood pedagogy teachers trained in motor development to see significant improvement