2013 Week 13: Tatty Bumpkin's POSE for the Week is HORSE!

By Sue Heron – Training Co-ordinator Tatty Bumpkin and Paediatric Physiotherapist

The activity of this week in Tatty Bumpkin classes is HORSE POSE; in the sessions your child will go on an adventure with Tatty Bumpkin right back Wobble Farm! Horse, and the other farm animals, need help to paint a picture of the farm for Earth Day.

What HORSE POSE Looks Like

Kick up your heels!

How To Do It (What to tell your child)

Place your hands on the floor in front of you, make sure the palms of your hands are on the floor and your fingers are spread out wide. Keeping your elbows straight, do little steps with your feet on the spot – just like a horse trotting!!

Note to parents: If your child is younger, watch them closely, providing support at their hips if necessary so they do not fall forwards.

Support your child round their hips, being careful that they do not fall forward

Want to Make it Harder?

Put your hands on the floor as before keeping your elbows straight. Now try to kick your feet up behind you. To do this you will have to take more weight through your shoulders, arms and hands. Be Careful not to fall forwards. Kick up with your preferred leg first then try to lead with your other leg..

Why it is ‘Good For Me'

Horse pose gives your child the opportunity to:

Strengthen their ‘core’ shoulder muscles, along with their arm and wrist muscles. Strengthening and increasing activity in the shoulder muscles is very useful for writing as these muscles need to be active for comfortable writing. If shoulder muscles are inactive or weak this can lead to children overusing their more delicate hand muscles when writing and hence getting hand ache

Improve their co-ordination and awareness of their right and left hand sides as they take steps or kick up with alternate feet in horse pose

Develop their balance skills as they shift their weight onto their arms and kick their feet up behind

Refine their sensory processing ability and ‘raise their levels of alertness’. Horse pose will stimulate your child’s vestibular sense. As stimulation of this sense often raises ‘levels of alertness’, horse pose is an ideal ‘movement break’ for your child if they need to raise their concentration levels after sitting for a while.

Doing activities with your child is a great way to bond with them. Research shows that children, especially boys, bond with others when they move with them. So doing horse pose with your child can be both fun and give you the opportunity to strengthen your shoulder muscles.

Make it Multi-Sensory, Educational & Fun

Through the magic of a Tatty Bumpkin class Horse pose can become both a multi-sensory and an educational activity. In Tatty Bumpkin classes we always try to stimulate a variety of senses, to add to the fun, give choice & to help the learning process.

If your child is attending a Tatty Bumpkin class this week they will have the opportunity to do Horse pose, stimulating their body senses, whilst using their senses of touch and vision to make the Pony’s picture with their friends. These multi-sensory activities will promote your child’s engagement, concentration skills and creativity, all vital aspects of the learning process.

All our classes are linked to the new 2012 EYFS framework meaning that your child will have the opportunity to progress in all areas of their development, giving them a truly holistic experience.

Children love doing things together, by watching others they also learn a great deal – often finding out a better way of doing things.

Wrapping Horse pose inside a story, means your child will get involved in the story and find Horse pose and the other activities more meaningful and hence more fun to do.

This week Tatty Bumpkin is asked by Horse to come back to Wobble Farm to help the animals make a picture. Everyone wants to ‘have a go’ at painting a bit of the picture: Cat can use her paws and dog can use his tail to paint the grass and sky, Worm can wriggle in the brown paint to make long tree trunks, Spider with her eight legs can do the tiny flowers and leaves and Frog can leap high into the air to add the sun! There will be lots more to add to the picture and Tatty Bumpkin is always ready to listen to new ideas ….

Find your local Tatty Bumpkin class at http://www.tattybumpkin.com/classes/find-class.html