My name is Katy, I am a Senior Room Leader for the Rising 2’s group at Daisychain Nursery and I’ve spent the past 10 years working in the Early Years sector, 6 and a half of those years have been at Daisychain.
For much of my career, I’ve focused on supporting children under 2 years old, as they develop essential physical skills in their early stages of life. More recently, I’ve embarked working with 2-year-olds, a journey I’ve grown to deeply enjoy. Staying active and exercising regularly is a passion of mine, and this love for movement strongly influences my work with the children I care for. I strive to inspire children to challenge themselves physically and develop lifelong skills through active play and exploration.
Nurturing Growth: The Importance of Physical Development in 2-year-olds by Katy T
Understanding the significance of the physical development of 2-year-olds helps parents, caregivers, and educators provide the necessary support for healthy growth throughout childhood and, later, adult life. At this age, toddlers experience rapid changes in their gross and fine motor skills, learning to run, jump, climb, and manipulate objects with increasing precision. These early physical milestones lay the groundwork for future skills, and supporting this development is key to fostering healthy, active, and confident children.
In this blog post, we’ll explore the importance of physical development in 2-year-olds, how it impacts other areas of growth and practical ways to foster it.
The Significance of Physical Development
At two years old, children experience significant changes in their physical capabilities. Physical development creates the building blocks for a wide range of learning and is essential to a child’s growth and their unique learning journey. At this stage, a child’s physical development strongly impacts the growth of their mind, body and coordination skills. Coordination is the brain’s ability to control the movement of different body parts simultaneously. Without good coordination, a child will struggle to perform simpler tasks such as balancing, pouring water, scraping plates, or even throwing and catching games. Along with coordination, it is important that children also develop strong core strength to ensure they gain stability, balance and motor skills. Which leads to further and wider full-body skills and movements they need to move, strive and thrive in their first years.
Children are naturally curious and are eager to play physically, especially at 2 years old. Exploring possible movement opportunities, encouraged through challenging spaces and open-ended resources, allows children to start their own games and opens up their imaginations! All children both need and want to take risks in order to explore limits, test boundaries, venture into new experiences, and develop their capacities from a very young age and their earliest play experiences. Some children are naturally fearless and may need to be made aware of the potential dangers involved in their choices, whilst other children may need more reassurance and encouragement when trying something new and challenging for the first time.
Engaging in active play not only strengthens their muscles and bones but also promotes cognitive growth by stimulating problem-solving, spatial awareness, and social interaction with peers. Additionally, regular physical activity helps establish healthy habits early on, laying the foundation for a lifelong appreciation of movement and well-being. Promoting physical activity is an approach that supports both physical development outcomes and self-regulation and executive function outcomes, and if you would like to know more about how to do this, I would recommend taking a look at the ‘EEF’ (Education Endowment Foundation) website that I have referenced below for further resources such as: How to promote physical development, teaching the skills needed for movement and handling and teaching the skills needed for mark-making and letter formation.
The Power of Our Approach
Within our setting, our approach is deeply rooted in fostering body development as a core aspect of a child’s growth. We ensure that planned physical activities are an integral part of each nursery day and that all children have sufficient time outdoors, making it our mission to be outside, every day. In our setting, we are fortunate to have ‘Funky Fitness’ physical sessions delivered by a member of our team who is a qualified personal trainer and musical theatre dancer. This has become a firm favourite part of the week for the children and they enjoy showing off their dance moves in the morning warm-up! By providing diverse opportunities for children to move and grow, we also believe in the value of risky play, encouraging children to explore and challenge themselves while maintaining their safety. The children always have access to creative, craft, water and sand opportunities both indoors and outdoors, so there are endless opportunities for the children to practice their hand-eye coordination skills and developing strong fine motor development. The children in our 2-year-old room have a passion not just for exploring with playdough and sensory activities, but also getting involved in the playdough-making process. This enables endless opportunities for different physical skills and movements to be used and developed, it really is happening at all times of the day. We also foster a ‘you can do it’ attitude towards the children and the through the experiences we give them we offer an encouraging and ‘have another go’ approach to their physical learning practises. What we say in these moments can have a huge impact on the outcome of a task, for example with no encouragement children may become frustrated or give up on something they find difficult. Using phrases such as “Have another go”, “Keep going, you can do it!” or simply offering help and demonstration.
We also like to set up activities for the children which offer a higher level of difficulty to further explore the children’s fine motor skills in different way. Recently we set up a cutting activity with scissors and some simple patterns drawn out on paper with the idea that the children may be able to cut along the lines that had been drawn for them. At the start of the activity, we noticed that a lot of the children were unsure or unable to hold the scissors correctly, however throughout the activity, with plenty of guidance from the practitioners who were supervising the activity, the children quickly started to pick up the technique of how to hold the scissor and safely use them. Some children picked this up quicker than others; however, by the end of the activity, most of the children could use the scissors independently without support from the adults! There was one child in particular who was able to use their scissors to cut out familiar shapes, they held up a piece of paper and announced, “Katy, I made a square!” we then worked together to cut out other shapes. I drew out the shape of a triangle and they then went on to cut it out by himself, it wasn’t perfect, but it was definitely a triangle!
What Does the Evidence Say?
The importance of physical activity in early childhood is supported by historic strong evidence and national guidelines. Surprisingly, official physical activity guidelines weren’t introduced in the UK until 2011 by the Department of Health and were then officially introduced later as a core component of the EYFS in 2012. In 2019 the Department of Health published physical activity guidelines for early years which states ‘children from 1 to 5 should aim for 180 minutes of activity as it has several physical benefits including better sleep, developing muscles and bones and encouraging movement and coordination’.
Cantell, Smyth, and Ahonen (1994) suggest that children with motor delays in early childhood are likely to have some degree of motor difficulties throughout their lives.
Encouraging enjoyment through play and a focus on child-directed choice are effective strategies to support children’s physical development further, and as educators, we have an important role to play in structuring the environment and activities to support children’s physical development.
There is evidence that this approach can be effective at improving children’s gross motor and fine motor skills as well as their balance and stability. The evidence highlights the importance of prioritising the general promotion of physical activity, not just teaching a specific skill. The research paints a positive picture of this approach but the types of activities and outcomes are very mixed, making it difficult to pinpoint effective practices. Despite this variety, it is possible to reflect on the evidence and consider how an educator can promote physical activity. In effective studies, educators focused on incorporating elements of play and prioritised children’s enjoyment. For example, educators led activities such as games, copying animal movements during imaginative pretend play, and adding a creative element to traditional exercise postures such as karate and yoga. Educators often demonstrated how to participate and then allowed time for children to play, practise, and repeat an activity.
The statutory framework tells us that at the expected level of development children should be able to:
- Negotiate space and obstacles safely, with consideration for themselves and others.
- Demonstrate strength, balance and coordination when playing.
- Move energetically, such as running, jumping, dancing, hopping, skipping and climbing
- Hold a pencil effectively in preparation for fluent writing – using the tripod grip in almost all cases.
- Use a range of small tools, including scissors, paint brushes and cutlery.
- Begin to show accuracy and care when drawing
A new survey from Change4Life and Disney UK has found that less than half of parents are aware that physical activity can build children’s self-confidence (49%), reduce anxiety (47%) and improve their self-esteem (46%). Just 16% (1 in 6) think that physical activity can help children develop attributes which make it easier to cope with life’s little setbacks. Evidence shows that children and young people who are more active have more confidence, higher self-esteem, less anxiety and stress and better social skills – attributes that can help them deal with the challenges they face in daily life. Positive attitudes towards physical activity have also been associated with children being happier.
Dr Ellie Cannon, GP and author, stated: “Physical activity has several well-documented benefits such as weight management, increased physical health and confidence. But, what’s often forgotten is that physical activity has also been linked to improved emotional and social development, increased self-esteem and better attention span, all of which are commonly desired by parents.
Conclusion
Take a moment to evaluate your settings indoor and outdoor environments, does it challenge the children’s physical abilities? Does it offer physical development opportunities and challenges? Do you foster a healthy physical development focus? If not, how could you adapt this? Perhaps you could get the children involved in making materials like playdough. Could you encourage a risk-assessed challenging activity? Can you involve the children in a physical activity session, every week as a part of their routine? Your commentary during risky play could be the encouragement they need to have a go and don’t forget, if at first you don’t succeed try, try and try again! Practice makes progress and we are the role models.
References
Risky play – What are the benefits in Early Years? – Teach Early Years
Why core strength and co-ordination is important – DfE
Cantell, M. H., M. Smyth, and T. P. Ahonen. 1994. “Clumsiness in Adolescence: Educational, Motor and Social 58 Outcomes of Motor Delay Detected at 5 Years.”
Development Matters – Non-statutory curriculum guidance for the early years foundation stage – DfE
Early years foundation stage (EYFS) statutory framework – GOV.UK
Physical activity guidelines: UK Chief Medical Officers’ report – GOV.UK
Early Years Evidence Store – Physical Development – Education Endowment Foundation
Help for early years providers – Physical development resources – DfE
