What is Parkour and Why Should Kids Do It?

Have you ever seen a bench or a picnic table around town and just wanted to jump on it? Perhaps your kids suddenly made a sprint and swung around a light pole. Those instincts are perfect for parkour. Kids love to jump around, and parkour teaches them how to do it safely and correctly. Instructors also show each student how to explore and control their potential with a smart, disciplined approach.

Parkour has a unique way of changing people's lives. The goal of parkour (also called l'Art du Deplacement) is to help that change be positive, progressive, lasting, and fun. It is one of the most fluid forms of exercise a person can get.

Parkour combines street-smarts and body-smarts. People who train parkour (a traceur or traceuse) learn to interact with the world around them by creatively jumping, climbing, crawling, and even rolling. It's a physical art form of natural movement that is completely unscripted.

Having a hard time imagining just what parkour is? This video will give you a great sense of it:

Although parkour got its start with a few friends in France, it has developed into its own global movement. You may have seen parkour in movies such as Casino Royale and The Bourne Ultimatum.

While it's sometimes known as an urban "sport", it is not really a sport, nor is it confined to urban environments. Parkour can be as unique as each person engaging with it - using your body's momentum, strength and redistribution of weight to propel you up, over or forward. The method features obstacle-course-like actions that challenge you mentally and physically.

Importance of dance in early childhood

Dance embodies one of our most primal relationships to the universe. It is pre-verbal, beginning before words can be formed. It is innate in children before they possess command over language and is evoked when thoughts or emotions are too powerful for words to contain.

Dance is a powerful ally for developing many of the attributes of a growing child. Dance helps children mature physically, socially, and cognitively. The physical benefits of dance are widely accepted, but the emotional, social and cognitive attributes have only recently begun to be appreciated.

Dance provides young children multiple perspectives. It is “a foundation of experience necessary for the future development of more advanced skills and a way to affirm an inner life and alternate realities” (Stinson, 1990). Through dance, children develop enhanced sensory awareness, cognition, and consciousness. It is this heightened state that creates the magic of movement that is dance.

National Dance Education Organization