Our older Nursery Children have started to become interested in playing team sports.
This week we introduced cricket and focused on ‘batting skills’. This involves a complicated sequence of hand eye co- ordination, spacial awareness, motor control as well as following rules. They did really well and worked as a team with a bowler, wicket keeper and fielders, taking turns to try out each role.
Starting to playing sports at a young age can have many long term benefits:
- Teamwork and benefits of social interaction among children can be best seen during sports.Children learn that they are part of a team that requires the same effort from all members to succeed, as well as how to win with class, and lose with dignity.
- They learn to respect authority, rules, team colleagues and opponents.
- Sport is an important learning environment for children. Numerous studies have shown that children who play sports perform better at school. It is also within sport that peer status and peer acceptance is established and developed.
- Sports experiences help build positive self-esteem in children.
When children learn positive life lessons through sports, there is no doubt they will grow to become honest, compassionate and reliable adults.