Series: Education in a Competitive and Globalizing World
BISAC: EDU033000

In the stage of infant education, children find in their own body and movement the main way of getting in touch with their surroundings, thereby acquiring knowledge about the environment where they are growing up and developing. Undoubtedly, the progressive discovery of the body itself as a source of feelings and sensations, exploring the different possibilities of action and body functions will constitute the necessary experiences upon which children’s thoughts are being built. Besides, affective relationships established in situations of psychomotor education, and particularly through gameplay, will be essential for children’s emotional development.

In this sense, this book is focused on justifying the necessary presence of physical education in infant education as well as showing a pedagogical proposal based on an attractive and entertaining motor intervention for children at this stage. This book contains concepts and assumptions about the psychomotor development such as the different motor skills and how to work them, the body scheme and the concepts of time and space and an explanation of how to work them in infant education. Concerning the importance of perceptions and sensations in this educational stage and from a practical point of view, it offers a teaching proposal to improve them. Additionally, this book not only details motor skills, but also explains how to work social, emotional and cognitive skills in an integrated way because the physical education in infant education is the best way to achieve this.

Moreover, this book highlights the importance of motor games and the different kinds of games which can be used in infant education. With this in mind, the authors can make use of the games as a tool to improve the teaching-learning process and to make the learning visible. Furthermore, it offers different methodological strategies to improve the motricity in infant education taking into account different factors such as the materials or environments which can be used to develop motor education. This book is essential, owing to the fact that it provides examples which show how psychomotor storytelling, learning corners, workshops and projects based on action and adventure spaces can be worked in a classroom.

From the authors’ point of view, professionals working in the field of infant childhood psychomotor skills may know and recognize the value of the proposals shown here so that they can teach other professionals to be more critical regarding their practice, increasing concerns about the development of motor skills – physical education in infant education in its systematic form – which, without any doubt, will result in children’s higher levels of welfare and health with regards to their own construction of the reality which surrounds them.