Benefits of the Climbing walls in schools and Sensory Integration rooms

Let me introduce myself, I’m Jorge and many of you will surely have talked to me when you ask us for advice on the purchase of psychomotor skills.

I want to share an incredible experience with the entire Tamdem community.

Recently I attended a psychomotor workshop in a Haureskola (Basque school for children) in Guipúzcoa, in which our climbing wall (Rocket is what we call it in our catalogue) was the main tool of the activity. It was the first time that the children climbed.

If I do not see it, I do not believe it!!

What was it that struck me so much during that workshop?

There were children between the ages of 2 and 10 (some kids with some alteration such as ADHD, among others, signed up for the session). There was a before and an after for me. When the session began, as expected, several children were afraid and said that they would not mount the climbing wall. In a matter of minutes the situation changed, as the kids were cheering and everyone, without exception, began to climb, the session went phenomenally well and the thing ended even better. It seemed that the kids were others after the workshop, as we say in the Basque Country: Agur beldurrak! Goodbye fears !! We were all happy, calm, eager to return, to play, to do things. Something positive had happened in the minds of those kids (and in mine, since I also participated in the session). Later I learned that all this has to do with brain plasticity, stimulation, learning through play and neuronal interconnections.

By the way, I must confess that that day I slept like never before, 9 hours of tugging, and I got up with energy, positivism and creativity I had not had in a while.

After the session, I spent some time talking with Nerea, the responsible for the workshop. She is passionated about our climbing wall. She told me that it is AWESOME how a child overcomes his fears and improves all abilities with a Rocket: his learning, his mental speed, his effectiveness when solving problems, his strength in his arms, his laterality… And, especially, children who have attention deficit and hyperactivity calm for a long time, which is not little.

She told me that for her, the loss of fears, among many other things, is FUNDAMENTAL for the good development of children and, with a climbing wall and several modules of psychomotricity, you achieve everything.

It is scientifically proven that fear can block a child’s brain to such an extent that it even prevents them from growing up (Shara-Jane Blakemore, neuroscientist, see interviews here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJMhO8u-ru0). For this and many other things, we consider that a Rocket is a fundamental tool for all the psychomotor rooms, Occupational Therapy and Sensory Integration rooms.

Nerea also explained to me that in her centre they cater to all types of users, and especially to children with autism spectrum. For them, our climbing wall is a fundamental tool during their sessions. Often very disturbed families come to him because his child has stopped eating or has a crisis and because he is autistic, he does not explain why and can not be helped. She told me a case, of which she is especially proud, of an autistic child who suddenly went from eating 35 foods to only 3. There was no human way to convince him to eat more food. You can imagine the situation of the boy and his family …

How did Nerea treat that child with autism spectrum?
First, she did an evaluation and then she treated him in her Tamdem multi-room for several days. Finally, he was discharged and the child even ate more than 50 foods.

I was very struck by a comment that Nerea made in which she explained that several speech therapists from her centre were already using our climbing wall during the sessions with their patients and the results were being IMPRESSIVE.

Nerea explained to me that what happens to these users is scientifically proven. The problem is that they have a dysfunction in their Sensorial Integration and that, doing several sessions in their room, mainly with the climbing wall and through games, these users can improve a lot, depending on the case, especially at very young ages, since the nervous system is still flexible and the human being has its greatest cerebral plasticity between 0 and 7 years old.

Our ROCKET children’s climbing walls, provide many benefits, among which we can highlight: improvement of the proprioceptive (position and movement) and vestibular senses (gravity, head movement and balance), improvement of the movement coordination, memory enhancement, improvement of learning and movement, problem solving, bilateral coordination for the improvement of crawling, favors the correct balance of the arms and body when walking, helps in the development of laterality, helps to improve the anticipation, intuition and planning of the movement.

After that session, and the experiences that Nerea told me, I also became a super-passionate of our climbing wall called Rocket.

Nerea … Thank you very much with all my heart!

When we use a Rocket we must forget about the typical professional climbing activity with 6 meters of height and that is something similar to climbing a rocky mountain. A climbing wall or children’s Rocket has a maximum of 2.40 meters high and the exercise consists of climbing up to five or six points in vertical, two or three in horizontal and one or two in oblique by stimulating and controlling the user at all times.

What is the size and type of suitable children’s climbing wall?
In Tamdem we have two types of climbing walls for children or Rocket, one vertical and the other with a small inclination. The latter is much easier to climb when the inclination is towards the ground and more difficult when the inclination is placed towards the ceiling. Therefore, the ideal climbing wall is as follows: 1 Rocket with downward inclination, 2 vertical Rockets and 1 Rocket with upward inclination. It is very important, from the point of view of safety, to place a Tamdem mattress for jumping or guardrail 15 cm thick (see images).

CLICK THE IMAGES TO ENLARGE

OTHER ARTICLES OF INTEREST:

Psychomotricity activity as a solution of childhood obesity (click to read)
How to set up a psychomotricity room (click to read).
Brachiation ladders: Benefits and how to use them? (click to read).
Technical help for handicapped people (especially for cerebral palsy) (click to read).
What is the use of child psychomotricity? (click to read).
Equipments for Early Stimulation rooms and their relationship with brain plasticity (click to read).
Benefits of natural psychomotricity (click to read)
How to set up a psychomotor room at home? (click to read)
Unknown pleasures of psychomotor skills (click to read)
Mats for psychomotricity, occupational therapy, early stimulation rooms and gymnastics (click to read)
How to perform psychomotor activities at home (click to read)

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