Shirley Kelley
Linda Faste

After mastering basic skills, students take the patterns into partnering and groups.



Doing these patterns while standing on a variable difficulty balance board greatly enhances one's ability to learn, to focus, to remember, and to express one's self.

Read illustrated pdf report of results from
Jordan Middle School program from Spring, 2006.

Bags, Balls and Brains
is an innovative, creative and unique program.

• It combines several successful academic readiness programs in a synchronistic way. 
• It provides a positive, engaging, and a physically active, fun-filled combination of activities.
• It employs the basic neurological, developmental processes underlying perceptual-motor integration as a mechanism to improve academic and social skills. 
• It utilizes a simultaneous, multi-sensory approach involving the eyes, the ears, the hands and the feet while crossing the three midlines of the body. The left to right midline enhances communication, the top to bottom midline enhances organization, and the front to back midline enhances comprehension, focus and attention.

Students are likely to see improvements in the following areas: gross motor, attention; visual; auditory; fine motor; rhythm; social behavior; and self esteem.

Gross Motor

• Balance, which is coordinated in the inner ear, underlies vision and hearing. Therefore, improved balance directly enhances vision and listening.
• Controlled body movements
• Relaxed, natural posture     
• Grace and sense of ease with movements
• Improved physical coordination
  

Attention

• Balanced muscle tone
• Ease in distinguishing left from right
• Ambidextrous: opens the pathways for both sides of the body
• More interest in learning
• More alert
• Focused attention
• Attention span lengthened to be able to easily handle longer academic assignments
• Relaxed concentration
• Less physical anxiety
• Frustration decreased
• Improvement in cognitive integration

Visual Skills

• Breaks ocular lock (staring) that can occur from too much TV or computer screen viewing
• Strengthens eye muscles to enable smoother flow of eye movement across a page horizontally for tracking written texts, and vertically and diagonally for tracking columns in mathematics
• Eye teaming: improves the ability of the eyes to work together
• Visual discrimination of details improves
• Gains in eye hand coordination
• Ability to control eyes
• Decoding skills improve

Auditory Skills

• Improvement in the ability to process verbal instructions
• Pronunciation improves
• Attention to details improves
• Increases span of auditory memory

Fine Motor

• Handwriting more intelligible
• Relaxed pencil and tool grip
• More refined eye hand coordination
• More coordinated small muscle movement

Rhythm

• Rhythmic cadence with reading aloud and talking flows more naturally
• Improved sense of timing in physical movements as well as social context
• Simultaneity of attention to self and other
• Attunement to group through resonance
• Awareness of relationship with others and increased ability to modulate responses

Social Behavior

• More socially aware
• Calmer behavior
• Impulsivity decreases
• Stress reactions diminish
• Head and heart congruence 

Self Esteem

• Confidence and self esteem improve
• Academic skills requires less effort
• Increased interest and participation