Balance board — what is it? What are its benefits for child development?

From the his­to­ry of cre­ation:

The Bal­ance Board or “Bil­gow Cere­bel­lar Stim­u­la­tion Board” was devel­oped by Amer­i­can edu­ca­tor Frank Bil­gow.

In the 60s of the last cen­tu­ry, the sci­en­tist noticed that school­child­ren who per­formed phys­i­cal exer­cis­es dur­ing breaks that were asso­ci­at­ed with bal­anc­ing are more suc­cess­ful in study­ing and pass­ing the school cur­ricu­lum, and their com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills are much high­er than those of oth­er peers. Devel­op­ing his the­o­ry, F. Bil­gow devel­oped a pro­to­type of a bal­anc­ing board, on which fur­ther stud­ies were car­ried out, prov­ing the effec­tive­ness of the method he pro­posed.

Bal­ance board today:

So, the bal­anc­ing board has a flat sur­face and a hemi­spher­i­cal base, so that in order to main­tain bal­ance, it is nec­es­sary to con­cen­trate and apply some effort. At the same time, even a child can cope with the board, it is com­plete­ly safe if class­es are con­duct­ed under the super­vi­sion of par­ents or teach­ers. It can be used by adults and chil­dren from 2 years of age with a wide vari­ety of prob­lems.

Who will ben­e­fit from a bal­ance board?

In the mod­ern world, class­es on the bal­ance bar are wide­ly used as a form of phys­i­cal ther­a­py.

So, bal­anc­ing cere­bel­lar stim­u­la­tion on the Bil­gow board is shown:

• hyper­ac­tive (ADHD) chil­dren with aca­d­e­m­ic prob­lems or vestibu­lar dis­or­ders;
• chil­dren with delays in psy­cho-emo­tion­al, speech and men­tal devel­op­ment;
• helps to cor­rect the pos­ture of the child;
• use­ful in class­es to cor­rect flat feet;
• indi­cat­ed for the pre­ven­tion of obe­si­ty;
• effec­tive for the com­pre­hen­sive devel­op­ment of the child’s think­ing, which sub­se­quent­ly, undoubt­ed­ly, will help him when study­ing at school.

Usu­al­ly with fre­quent and skill­ful use of a bal­anc­ing sim­u­la­tor in chil­dren:

• the mus­cu­lar frame is strength­ened;
• improve com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills and speech;
• improve hand­writ­ing and atten­tion.

Many pro­fes­sion­als rec­om­mend using this sim­u­la­tor when mas­ter­ing all sports that require bal­ance — skate­board­ing, surf­ing, snow­board­ing, etc.

How does a bal­ance board work?

Stand­ing with their feet on the bal­ance board, the child per­forms sim­ple tasks or plays games, while doing his best to main­tain bal­ance. Among the sim­plest exer­cis­es for cere­bel­lar stim­u­la­tion, one can sin­gle out the trans­fer of the ball from moth­er to child stand­ing on the board and back. Fur­ther, the tasks grad­u­al­ly become more dif­fi­cult, and the child must name let­ters, num­bers, names of ani­mals, plants, using more and more areas of the brain. And the effect is enhanced by the fact that all these use­ful work­outs remind the child of an excit­ing game, which is why he does not get bored in the process, and con­tin­ues to play with plea­sure.

The pur­pose of this cere­bel­lar stim­u­la­tion — syn­chro­nize the work of the brain cen­ters respon­si­ble for cog­ni­tive and motor func­tions, as well as devel­op visu­al-motor inter­ac­tion and coor­di­na­tion. As experts note: “Often, par­ents attribute the clum­si­ness and awk­ward­ness of the child’s move­ments to per­son­al­i­ty traits. How­ev­er, these are clear signs that there are more seri­ous devi­a­tions of a psy­cho­log­i­cal, intel­lec­tu­al and speech ther­a­py nature. In this case, it is very impor­tant to notice the prob­lem in time and start work­ing on it even before the moment when the help of a spe­cial­ist becomes manda­to­ry.

Where to buy?

Bal­ance boards from AmoKids are made of nat­ur­al mate­ri­als and are very con­ve­nient to use, while a fas­ci­nat­ing labyrinth with balls will help diver­si­fy your dai­ly work­outs and make the game even more fun.