Mat Exercises: Brain-Building Animal Exercises for Gross Motor Development and Higher Learning

This article provides helpful mat exercises to build the brain for higher learning concepts in the classroom. Affiliate links are included for your convenience. Integrated Learning Strategies (ILS) is a learning and academic center. As a reminder, ILS is not a health care provider and none of our materials or services provide a diagnosis or treatment of a specific condition or learning challenge you may see in your child or student. If you seek a diagnosis or treatment for your child or student, please contact a trained professional who can provide an evaluation of the child.

As children become more exposed to activities that further develop their gross motor skills, they are more prepared for higher learning concepts in the classroom. Children need these types of movement exercises to establish better body control and management, which directly relates to how they will attend and focus in the classroom.

By maximizing the amount of movement a child gets on a daily basis, and even pushing them to new levels, you may find better results with their learning ability as they begin to listen better to their teacher, sit still in class, retain facts and details, follow directions and form the skills they need for reading and writing.

Mat exercises are a great way to improve your child’s gross motor skills and also provides them with more opportunities to move while indoors.

Benefits of Mat Exercises

As your child completes mat exercises, they will strengthen their core and build their gross motor skills. These types of exercises can help your child in the following ways:

Attention, Focus and Concentration

Completing exercises, especially those on a mat, can increase physical endurance needed for sustained attention and focus in the classroom. This allows your child to sit in the chair while at school for longer periods of time without distraction and fidgeting.

Reading and Writing

As your child engages in mat activities, they will often use their hand-eye coordination and crossing the midline, like we see with the elephant and kangaroo hop. These exercises develop your child’s visual-motor skills as they guide their hands, arms and legs through each activity. These important skills are needed for retaining information and for tracking words on the page.

Crossing the midline helps your child develop their directionality skills used for writing letters and numbers, spatial perception used for correctly spacing words in sentences, tracking words from sentence to sentence, and activating both the right and left sides of the brain so they work together.

Following Instructions and Listening to the Teacher

When your child participates in fun mat activities, they have to watch, listen and follow. Because this is normally the same process they do while listening to the teacher, it’s a good way to prep them and strengthen those skills for sharper development. Your child has to first watch the teacher, listen and retain the instructions, and then complete the directions they are given. This is the same processed used in these activities as well as other sports exercises.

Taking Notes in the Classroom

Most people don’t realize how important gross motor skills can be for something as simple as taking notes in the classroom. Many times students who have such low muscle tone they can barely lift their body, head and neck to copy what is on the chalkboard. Mat activities can strengthen your child’s core, help their posture and support the muscles in the neck and head used for taking notes while the teacher is teaching.

Mat Activities

Here are a few mat activities to get you started. Using animal movements not only activates several areas of your child’s body and his or her brain, it is also a fun way to get them moving without it seeming like work. Each exercise has a specific purpose for enhancing different areas of the body for higher learning.

Mat Exercises Printable

To print your own free copy of these mat activities, please complete the information below.

Relted Products

Integrated Learning Strategies is a Utah-based center dedicated to helping mainstream children and children with learning challenges achieve academic success. Our services provide kids with non-traditional tutoring programs within the Davis County, Kaysville, Layton, Syracuse, Farmington, and Centerville areas. Areas to find Integrated Learning Strategies include: Reading tutors in Kaysville, Math tutors in Kaysville, Common Core Tutors in Kaysville, Tutors in Utah, Utah Tutoring Programs