Following the imagination of 4-5 year old boys
I have notice a fact for a long time but only recently given it the attention that it deserves. Many boys around the age of 4 or 5, though arguably they start earlier, have a deep inner need to roam and explore a larger world of immediacy. They want to not only find things, but to move around in complicated ways developing their motor sensory integration of a landscape. Think of what it takes for example to run through a bumpy field of grass and then hop over a creek, and climb a tree on the other side. These activities involve complex integrations of motor-sensory activities. But it is not merely for the integration of motor-sensory operations that a young boy thirsts for these movements, but to create an imaginative landscape in which he can then move and live and play. Developing this map of the world gives him a kind of peace because then his own biophysical map is situated in it, and he knows where he resides in that map. This in turn sets up for later periods of higher order thinking and reflection, and so it is crucial that this unfolds properly. It is the reason that boys become “fidgety” and anxious when in an enclosed space where they really cannot move about. It really is a prison to them, even if there is much to do in the room, it is not what they need at this period of growth.