1. Activate 5, 7, 9 and 11 are new programmes from Val Sabin Publications and Training following over three years of research and development. From her provision of over 3,000 gym, games and dance activities to choose from, modify and add to, Val Sabin has worked with others to produce programmes that children at different levels can cope with, enjoy and achieve success.
2. Activate moves whole classes of children through a comprehensive 3-dimensional movement with music programme within their personal space which enables tempo and rhythm in the movements to be varied through changes in the music.
3. The Activate programmes of repetitive activities with music are embedded in progressive and developmental schemes. Activate is carefully constructed to be used for approximately 10 minutes first thing in the morning before lessons start formally and for approximately 5 minutes after lunch before afternoon lessons start.
4. As teachers go through the “Start of Morning” programmes they will notice that the activities are repeated and developed within progressive modules utilising the best movement principles that are possible in the restricted space of a classroom.
5. The activities are designed to help children become better co-ordinated, more balanced, more confident in movement as their neurological systems become better, fitter and faster.
6. Acknowledged influences inspiring the development and direction of the Activate schemes:-

• the pioneering research work of Harold Levinson who in 1973 reported on the significance of deficiencies in the cerebella and vestibular systems found in people with dyslexia.

• the effectiveness of sound therapies arranged by Alfred Tomatis has been kept in mind during the design and selection of our activities to music.

• the pioneering work carried out by Peter Blythe and Sally Goddard-Blythe of INPP on primitive and postural reflexes links with neurological developmental delay and its remediation.

• Winford Dore and the DDAT organization for widely publicising the benefits of a repetitive physical movement therapy in “helping the systems of dyxlexia, dyxpraxia, Attention Deficit Disorder, ADHD, learning and behavioural difficulties and under achieving at school”.

• ideas and elements in the Dennison’s “brain gym” approach, various martial arts training movements and other approaches have also been found to be useful.

  With around 200 patterns of movement to music carefully placed in progressive and developmental schemes, the Activate programmes go further down the paths pointed to by various researchers. So far the Activate benefits have been excellent but at this time we acknowledge that our report studies are not objective enough. We hope that in years to come the very low-cost and, so far, very effective Activate programmes will be objectively researched and reported following social science best practices.

 

http://www.valsabinpublications.com/