Lucinda Coey, writing in an Active for Life post, notes that “we are wired to avoid what makes us uncomfortable – it’s in our DNA” and serves to help keep us alive when we are in conditions of extreme stress or that threaten our lives. It is less helpful to us in many of our modern-life situations, where our body starts to manifest symptoms of avoidance (headache, stomach-ache, extreme tiredness, etc.) over challenges such as a study sheet filled with spelling words.

Classical conditioning (a behaviourist theory of learning discovered by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov in his work with dogs), is the process by which a naturally occurring stimulus is paired with a stimulus in the environment, and as a result, the environmental stimulus eventually elicits the same response as the natural stimulus.

Coey refers to the way adults will use this to pair a less attractive option, such as house-cleaning, with a fun activity such as playing their favourite music really loud and singing along while doing the work, which both creates a more pleasurable experience and builds in a time limit to the task. She suggests that pairing learning with fun and active movement activities can help kids focus better and ease feelings of tension, anxiety and depression.

She outlines an activity she used successfully with her own children, ‘Hop a Letter’, with suggested modifications for toddlers, preschoolers, and kindergarten/primary school-aged children.

The game, outlined at https://activeforlife.com/get-active-and-school-ready-game/ involves making groups of 6 to 8 letters on the ground (chalk) or floor (painter’s tape), making sure there are some combos that will make words. The toddler version uses letter names (with a two-footed or one-footed hop). The preschool versions uses phonetic letter sounds and starting/ending letters of words.