Jumping is a motor milestone that requires strength, balance, coordination, body awareness and motor planning.
Since you all know kyra can now do stationary jumps, we thought it would be good time to teach her to jump forward..
The cues for development of skill in jumping and landing (two foot takeoff to a two foot landing):
•Bend knees
•Shift weight to toes
•Swing arms forward
•Land both feet at the same time
•Balance landing
For the shifting of weight on toes, we did lot of tippy toes exercises like reaching up high to give mom high five, or popping a bubble.
There are different patterns of jump when a child learns
Two-foot takeoff to a one-foot landing
Two foot takeoff to a two foot landing
One-foot takeoff to a landing on the same foot (hop)
One-foot takeoff to a landing on the other foot (leap)
One-foot takeoff to a two-foot landing
All of this is experimenting and learning how the body feels when they jump.
Took kyra a while but she seems to get it. We are gonna practice this a lot, and may be include a hurdle to jump through soon.