Physical development is an incredibly fundamental part of the Early Years Foundation Stage. While supporting physical development naturally permeates through the entire nursery or school day, from outdoor play to fine motor skills, there are lots of ways to target this area specifically, too! With the exciting hook of the Paris 2024 Olympics, there is ample opportunity this year to get learners engaged in physical challenges, all while supporting an understanding of the world and our global community.

In this blog post, we'll be sharing some fun EYFS activities that connect to the Olympics, all while supporting physical challenge, risk taking and strength building.

Obstacle courses

DIY Archery

Credit: @mouse_and_roos_adventures

Combining creativity, fine motor and agility, a DIY archery play set up is a wonderful way to get learners thinking, exploring and developing! Make use of our colourful tuff trays as backgrounds for your targets and add paint, paper or chalk to create a spot for children to aim at. Here our fire red tuff tray is the perfect backdrop, but you can use any colour you like. This is brilliant for hand eye coordination and concentration.

Balance Beams

Nothing gets children excited about gymnastics like having a go themselves! Our recycled construction kit isn't just perfect for your loose parts play and your deconstructed role play - it makes the perfect resource to practice balance and coordination! Encourage children to stack, link and lay out their very own balance beams. Extend the play on a grander scale with our Giant Balance Pack, perfect for larger cohorts or for multiple children to explore and create at once.

Climbing

Who needs an excuse to climb? Here our climbing crest is being put to brilliant use outdoors. Great for encouraging learners to flex those muscles, try something out of their comfort zone and supporting risk taking.

A real EYFS staple, obstacle courses are easy to set up, easily resourced and combine a huge variety of different physical skills. Jumping, hopping, climbing and running are all combined to make a quick, affordable and easy physical development activity. While this is easy to resource yourself, we have plenty of options to get you started, too. Our loose parts obstacle course set provides everything you could need to get going, and doubles up as loose parts play too!

Chalk it up

Finally, we love combining reading and writing with outdoor, gross physical development. Scribe instructions on the floor with chalk and get children exploring and being challenged, all while practising blending and segmenting!

These are just a few examples of our favourite physical development activities. We have plenty more where that came from! Head to our blog all about the fundamentals of physical development here. Read more about getting gross motor ready in your garden, while for all things fine motor, head here.