What is Heavy Work and Why do I Call it a Probiotic for the Brain?
Debra Em
Creating the Perfect Learning Biome for the Brain
Most of the time we think of focus as being all in the head, but did you know you can improve focus through engaging activities that feel more like play than hard-to-accomplish brain focusing exercises?
In the occupational therapy field, the term “heavy work” is used a lot to describe activities that require a child to move large muscles of the body. Usually these activities include some form of proprioceptive input to the muscles and joints.
As a reading specialist, jumping is a favorite heavy work activity I use frequently with children. Though the activity doesn’t look anything like what one would think of when it comes to an academic lesson, jumping is like a probiotic, creating the perfect biome for the brain.
Why Does Heavy Work - Work?
Receptors from muscles and joints register the input from jumping and send the information to the brain. This information is like the GPS for your brain, providing coordinates for where the body is in space. Improving body awareness helps a child feel more centered and ultimately more focused.
To make the jumping activities even more effective, using quadrants creates additional novel and mind challenging elements. Making the brain work harder using quadrant activities is what I call “Powering Up!” a lesson. No lazy brains allowed on my watch!
Powering Up! is where you take a traditional academic lesson and add powerful brain boosting activities. It doesn’t take any longer to Power Up! a lesson but children usually complete their academics faster and remember it better and longer when academics are teamed with heavy work and vestibular activities.
In a previous post, I provided you with a Twister Puzzle Memory Match Game. For this post, I’m doing a heavy work jumping activity mash-up. If you’re familiar with my Focus Moves activities, I’ve taken the Jumping Feet 2 quadrant activity and combined it with the Twister Puzzle activity.
How super cool is that? If you’re using my Focus Moves activities, remember that you can combine elements of different activities and do mash-ups to increase the novelty, fun, and difficulty.
Directions:
Make a quadrant on the floor with painter’s tape. Begin standing in the center of the quadrant. Jump to the quadrant with the Twister Puzzle move. Do the Twister Puzzle move. Stand up and jump to the next quadrant with the Twister Puzzle move. Repeat until all quadrants have been completed.
Red means use the right side of the body. Blue means use the left side of the body. Half moons represent knees. Leaf pattern represents elbows. Circle represents head and yellow bum represents, well, the bum! Only the body parts in the puzzle touch the floor. All other body parts are off the floor.
You can purchase and download the entire set of Twister Puzzle cards here.
If you don’t know how to do these activities, consider taking a course to learn more about S’cool Moves and how it can help children learn faster and with less stress.
The Moral of the Story
The moral of this blog post is for you to understand that the body is a powerful focusing tool. Instead of only focusing on brain-based focusing activities, invite the body to come along. The body is the brain’s probiotic, creating a fertile ground for all that great academic information to take root and grow.