The ABC's of Physical Literacy
The ABC’s of physical literacy refer to four basic capacities that support human movement: agility, balance, coordination and speed. Learning about these foundation skills of physical literacy can help parents, caregivers, and educators to encourage children’s play that promotes these capacities.
An Active for Life article discusses the physical literacy ABC’s, with links to activities to support children’s physical literacy learning.
Agility refers to the ability to adjust our body’s physical position quickly, integrating balance, coordination, and speed. We can promote children’s agility through games such as follow the leader and hopscotch.
Balance is about maintaining your body’s centre of gravity in line with your base of support. There are two kinds of balance: static and dynamic. Static balance is when you maintain your balance in a stationary position and dynamic balance is when you maintain your balance while you are moving. Balance can be disrupted by health issues such as ear infections, which can cause our balance to be disrupted by changing light conditions or uneven floor and ground surfaces. Balance requires a steady stream of information from all your sensory systems, working together to monitor changes in your body’s spatial orientation with respect to your base of support. We have all seen how children’s balance can be compromised when they are going through a growth spurt and their sense of themselves in space is not what they have become used to, and how toddlers, with unequal distribution of body mass (top heavy) can easily be put off balance.
Coordination requires orchestrated movement of multiple parts of the body to generate actions such as walking and running. During coordinated movement, our body is constantly making adjustment to each movement according to feedback from our sensory systems. Processes that can seem so simple to an adult – like pouring a glass of water – require a complex sequence of movements to achieve without spilling, but we have come to take it for granted due to practice. This, along with skills such as catching a ball, are referred to as eye-hand coordination. Inter-limb coordination refers to coordination between different limbs, like walking or running.
Speed doesn’t refer to how fast you can run but refers to how quickly you can move your body, or parts of your body, within specific movement tasks such as throwing or skipping rope.
The article stresses that parents, caregivers, and educators can promote the development of these physical literacy ABCs by encouraging children in unstructured play from a young age, activities that are initiated and controlled by the children themselves, such as making mud pies or inventing active games where the children determine the rules.
The Active for Life Activities for Kids web page is a terrific resource, easy to search by age and by skills. It is accessible and very easy to navigate and offers a wide range of opportunities to practice and develop the physical literacy skills.