As I have shared in a previous entry, my son played hopscotch during our physical development activity this week. The objectives of the game is to help the child gain coordination, balance and directionality of his gross motor skills. A child’s gross motor abilities are connected with other physical functions.
It is important to identify gross motor weakness, if any, during the child’s physical activity. It will affect his education if not discussed early on with possibly a developmental pediatrician. As with other physical development activities, I first had to make a demonstration on how to do it. This has earned me chuckles from my little guy from time to time. But I don’t mind, really. It is fun to be a kid once in a while and while I am at it allowing me to do unconscious workouts. Who knows if I’d be at this every single day, I wouldn’t need the natural diet pills that I have waiting for me by my kitchen counter.
As per wikipedia, here is the Origin of Hopscotch:
There are apocryphal stories of hopscotch being invented by Romans or Chinese,[2] but the first recorded reference to hopscotch dates back to 1677. In an entry of Poor Robin’s Almanack for that year, the game is referred to as “Scotch-hoppers.” The entry states, “The time when schoolboys should play at Scotch-hoppers.” The 1707 edition of Poor Robin’s Almanack includes the following phrase… “Lawyers and Physicians have little to do this month, so they may (if they will) play at Scotch-hoppers.”[3]
Since the game was known and popular in the seventeenth century, it is logical to assume that it existed at least a few decades (or perhaps even many centuries) before 1677. But no conclusive evidence has yet been presented to support this theory.