The relationship between motor development, balance and attention in the child

Relating balance to attention in physical education classes in the second seven-year cycle of Waldorf schools

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Rudolf Steiner organized three blocks of four senses each. The first block corresponds to the bodily senses, i.e. those that inform us about ourselves. The sense of touch, the sense of life, the sense of movement, and the sense of balance.

The second block is made up of the emotional senses, which inform us about our environment, and which we respond to with sympathy or antipathy. The sense of smell, the sense of taste, the sense of warmth, and the sense of sight.

The third is the block of the cognitive or social senses, which help us to perceive other human beings. Hearing, speech, thinking, and the sense of the I. Although from an early age we have all the senses, which belong to the physical body, active, they mature progressively in the Soul, through the contact with the environment. Pedagogy has an important role in respecting the evolutionary periods of the child.

The bodily senses are also called basic since they are the basis of the cognitive and social senses, which will develop during adolescence. A primary objective for the infantile stage is the cultivation of the perception of the basic senses that guarantee in the young person adequate social and cognitive capacities to perceive the other.

I am going to describe the Sense of balance, which is the topic I am going to develop, and the capacity of attention. The sense of Balance, brings us balance at the physical level, gravitational stability, inner balance at the level of psychic mood. It develops the feeling of inner calm, feeling of self-confidence.

There is a lack of development of the feeling when there are factors of exaggerated external stimulation. Feeling of listening, of reading aloud, difficulty of orientation, especially backwards, difficulty to concretize an image mentally. Activities proposed to stimulate the child's feelings with respect to attention and balance. 

The senses of touch, the senses of life, and the sense of movement and balance are all within our most intimate realm.

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