Innovative project “Basketball eurythmy” was designed with the intention to define clear guidelines in working with children of pre-school and early school age. In the planning process, besides the project manager, members of the club, parents, teachers, pedagogues and experts from various fields in the upbringing and education of children of the early school age took part. The trainings are managed by Dragan Bojat, a class teacher, a basketball coach and former basketball judge, and Srdjan Antic, FIBA Expert, and special significance is provided by the expert assistance provided by Prof. Dr. Vladimir Koprivica, former Dean of the Faculty of Sport and Physical Education and Prof. Dr Ivanka Gajić, Dean of Sport FACULTY.
Eurythmy is an art expressed by a movement. The name comes from the Greek language where it has the meaning of a beautiful or harmonious rhythm of the movement. In verbal communication, a person is expressed in words, while in a jurithmia he expresses himself as a “visible speech” when the movement of the body takes over the role of the body. In this way words and tones become visible in the jurithm interpretation. Guided by this theory, we created a basketball jurithmia as the art of a body movement coordinated with the elements of basketball and by throwing a ball.
This aspect of eurythmy is connected with basketball as the sport most suitable for our program and the development of motor intelligence, that movements of the entire body carry out a certain activity by developing all regions of the brain (rotation, balance, dynamic eye accomodation, fine motoring, speech, etc.). According to the program of our Academy of Basketball Intelligence, children solve motor problems and adjust the movements of the whole body. Conducting exercises in our trainings is closely related to coordination and motor intelligence. Children are taught to perform movements with well-defined muscles, minimally consumed energy and proper breathing.
Using our program, children successfully solve problems in the development of motor intelligence that are not only seen in sports. By developing these skills we positively influence the confidence and school success. Today, unfortunately, parents do not recognize problems that can arise in the form of dyslexia, dysgraphia, AGHD, hypotonia, visual perception problems, hypokinesia (reduction in motor function or activity, reduced ability to move) and so on, so it is increasingly common that children when enrolling in the first grade they have to do additional motor exercises to follow the requirements of the school program.
When developing their abilities, children need to use diverse content in the initial phases of motor development in order to learn how to use their body. With our program, children use all kinds of movements and solve new motor tasks that influence the development of brain and motor intelligence.
In the previous practice, three types of jurithmia were used: pedagogical, health and artistic.
Pedagogical eurythmy is a mode of action with a movement that has pedagogical value, and certain jurithmic elements help children to overcome certain educational and educational contents. The pedagogical program is realized in Waldorf Education, from kindergarten to the end of secondary school. Children thanks to jurithmia practice motoring, concentration, hearing, coordination of movements, speech and thoughts.
This type of eurythmy has been used since 1904 when Rudolf Steiner, a philosopher and teacher of natural and classical subjects, was engaged in the education of children employed in Waldorf-Astoria, a cigarette factory in Stuttgart. Thus, “Waldorf Education” was created based on the theory of Rudolf Steiner in the field of children’s upbringing in official educational institutions. The first “Waldorf School” was founded in 1919 in Stuttgart, while there are currently more than 1,000 schools, about 2,000 kindergartens and 646 centers for special education located in 60 countries in the world. There are them in Europe, Asia and Africa, and in the United States alone, the number of “Waldorf Schools” has grown to over 200 schools.
Artistic eurythmy is used on the stage where the performance of the jurithm performs by converting poetry into movement, when the human body becomes sound and speech.
Healthy eurythmy for more than 80 years has been used for medical purposes to treat certain diseases through the design of specific eurythmics movements.
BASKETBALL EURYTHMY
