A Ready Body creates a Learning Mind!

• With Ready Bodies, Learning Minds you'll understand the linkage between motor planning, learning and performance
• You will learn how children with immature sensory systems develop faulty and adaptive patterns
• Ready Bodies, Learning Minds is designed to preempt and correct these patterns and ready the child for learning

Reflexes, Sensory Systems, Learning and Performance

Learning occurs primarily via the interaction of the sensory systems. It is not something we can see happening, but is rather information our brain is gathering through these systems and sensations all the time. The reflex system contributes to our understanding of movement. The tactile, proprioceptive, and vestibular systems contribute to our kinesthetic awareness. The visual and auditory systems supply us with stimulation from the environment. The information gathered is our storehouse of knowledge and skills used to perform tasks.

Performance is the motor or movement response. We speak, gesture, and write to communicate our thoughts and ideas. These are all movement skills that are used to demonstrate what we have learned. We often mistakenly label the performance of these movement skills as learning.

Motor Planning

When learning a new task, we think through the new information our sensations give us and then perform; this creates a motor response. With practice, skills are refined by recalculating the information from the sensory systems and a motor pattern emerges. A motor skill is a highly refined pattern of movement performed automatically from previously developed plans.

Whatever activity a child does will require motor planning. If you are seeing a pattern of difficulty, the Ready Bodies program can help you back up and understand which systems are giving the child the biggest problem, and how to address them.