Motor activity and academic achievement The importance of movement from kindergarten to primary schools

Abstract

Physical activity is not always performed regularly, school disciplines based on verbal language are often preferred in favour of reading, writing and counting, and students sacrifice hours dedicated to game and movement. It is considered – wrongly – that motor education has a subordinate role compared to the other subjects included in the curriculum.
Actually the body has a very important influence on the general growth of the child, also on cognitive functioning. Early years of life are a window of opportunities to encourage, promote and optimize motor, intellectual and social development, on which the academic achievement will depend on, later. There is a growing interest in the relationship between movement and school performance, studies have been conducted at international level to
verify the positive combination. The purpose of this article is to analyze some research to confirm the relationship between movement and academic achievement in children from 3 to 10 years. A total of 16 studies were reported, 6 referring to the Kindergarten and 10 referring to the Primary School.