8 Great Smarts by Kathy Koch

Author:Kathy Koch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Published: 2016-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

Perhaps you can relate to Kristin’s statements because of your own past or your child’s strengths or struggles. If not, I imagine you know someone who shares similar experiences to Kristin’s. The word smart is empowering. I encourage you to use it! The following information will help you know when to do just that.

BODY SMART: THE POWER OF MOTION

Body-smart children think with movement and touch. When they’re excited, they move more. They need freedom and sometimes lots of space to move productively. They get joy from accomplishing or surpassing their physical goal so everything comes together perfectly. Motion is their power.

When being body smart, children learn and think with their entire bodies. Their hands are busy “talking,” building, writing, touching, twisting hair, playing, etc. Their feet are busy tapping, shifting in place, or walking. Body-smart children are often moving—sometimes purposefully and intentionally, sometimes not. This is because when body-smart children are excited, they can’t help but move. Being in motion is like breathing to body-smart children.

Body-smart children are usually good at large-motor tasks because they can control their entire body. Therefore, they may enjoy and be successful at physical pursuits like hiking, sports, dancing, acting, camping, and/or playing musical instruments. How might being body smart influence the choice of which instrument to play? These children might prefer drums, trombone (which is dependent upon remembering and feeling how far out to pull the slide), and string bass (which they can stand and play and requires full-body posture and balance). Make sense? Yet, we can’t put children in boxes. My niece Katie, who is so body smart she earned a college soccer scholarship, chose to play the flute. She liked the tone.

Often body-smart children can easily execute small-motor tasks. Their eye-hand coordination allows them to handle objects carefully and to master skills using the finer muscles of their fingers and hands. Small-muscle movements are needed for such skills as sewing, carpentry, model building, cooking, handwriting, and typing. And, the playing of Katie’s flute. These are also the children who may like and win certain online and computer games because of how quickly their fingers can react to things on the screen.

It’s possible to have strengths in large-motor areas but not in small-motor skills, or vice versa. Understandably, children with abilities and interests in both are more body smart than children with strengths in just one area. If it’s hard to identify strengths with either large-motor or small-motor tasks, maybe body smart hasn’t been fully awakened yet. If this is true for one or more of your children, I trust you’ll make it a priority to awaken it soon. Just get out of the house and go to the park.

My body smart was awakened because of a wise decision my parents made when I was about six years old. Until then, I had obviously used my body to walk, run, play, color, cut, etc. Nevertheless, not unlike many children, I was somewhat clumsy. My parents enrolled me in dance class and God used tap and ballet instruction to establish connections between my brain and my body.

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