To be filed under the general heading of "So how does this apply to children with motor disorders such as cerebral palsy":
Another study, this one presented by Catherine Davis, an associate professor of pediatrics at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, has concluded that "children who play vigorously for 20 to 40 minutes a day may be better able to organize schoolwork, do class projects and learn mathematics".
Without entirely resolving my own thoughts towards practical implementations at Paces and in Sheffield, I keep coming back to this as an important issue in the education of children with motor disorders. If exercise is so important to brain activity and academic performance in children without motor disorders, such that Catherine Davis can state ""School systems need to know that to reach their achievement targets, they need to add physical activity to the school day rather than reduce it" then what are the pedagogic and curricular implications implications for children with motor disorders? What are the implications for early learning in the UK's "Childrens' Centres"? What are the implications for workforce training, for all who work with children and adults with motor disorders who cannot organise their own exercise programmes?
Footnote:
The same applies to adults with motor disorders. The awful image that keeps coming to this Dad's mind is of adults in care homes slumped in wheelchairs, dumped in front of televisions or the budgie cage, minds switched off. Is this the future for my daughter in her old age when her mother and I can no loger care for her?
Debbie Thorpe's research study, Project ACT NOW, that I good the fortune to visit in July, might help build the evidence base that physical activity is as important to the well-being of adults with motor disorders as it is in children - and that there are public policy, training and service delivery implications for adults in care just as much as for schoolchildren and babies.
I wonder where policy and practice is starting to change?
(The research was reported in USA Today and then picked up on the SharpBrains website in "a collection of recent news coverage on brain heath, fitness and training topics.)