Course Content

  1. 1

    • What is a Movement Play Area
  2. 2

    • Size and availability

    • Setting up the area

    • Resources

    • Guidance for children

    • Guidance for practitioners

  3. 3

    • Being a Movement Witness

    • Being a Movement Player

    • It takes a team

    • Safety

    • Playing on the edge

    • Pop up circle time Movement Play Area
  4. 4

    • Sensory

    • Motor

    • Social

    • Emotional

    • Wellbeing

    • Parents as partners

    • Your thoughts

Course Tutor

Penny Greenland

Penny has been teaching across the early years sector for thirty-five years. In 1998 she set up the action-research project which led to the creation of Developmental Movement Play and has continued to research and develop the approach ever since. She is author of Hopping Home Backwards: body intelligence and movement play and a contributor to several early years text books about physical development.

Safe, purposeful and child-led

Introduce a space within your indoor environment dedicated to freeflow, spontaneous movement play that children organise for themselves. Create guidance to keep it safe, purposeful and child-led.

Support children to move more

Make it available all the time, and give it equal status with other learning areas. Notice how children move more as a result and how indoor movement is different from outdoor movement.

Deepen the learning

​Develop your practice to deepen the learning that happens here. Make it the place where the Developmental Movement Play approach is at it’s most effective. Children come here to build sensory and motor skills, explore relationships and show you who they are. And to engage deeply in something they love - moving for the sheer pleasure of it.

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