In the world of education, we are constantly seeking keys to unlock the potential of every child. Often, we focus on purely cognitive aspects: memorization, logic, understanding. Yet, we sometimes forget a fundamental truth: before being a learning mind, a child is a moving body, exploring, feeling. This body is not just a vehicle for the brain; it is its inseparable partner, the first learning tool. Imagine that school learning, like reading or writing, is the roof and walls of a house. For this house to be solid, it needs robust and invisible foundations. These foundations are coordination, balance, and awareness of one's own body in space.
At Dynseo, we have placed this conviction at the heart of our approach. We have observed for years how even subtle motor difficulties can create major obstacles in a student's academic journey. A child struggling to maintain balance on one leg may also find it hard to follow a line of text with their eyes. A child whose hands do not coordinate their movements well will have difficulty forming letters, which can lead to frustration and discouragement. That is why we have developed a holistic approach that links body and mind. Our educational game application, COCO PENSE and COCO BOUGE, and our training for teachers are the two pillars of this vision.
In this article, we will explore together why coordination and balance are essential school prerequisites and how, through our tools, we help you build these indispensable foundations for every student, particularly for those with learning difficulties.
Even before holding a pencil or deciphering a letter, a child learns with their whole being. The early years of their life are a remarkable motor exploration. Climbing, jumping, running, throwing... Every movement, seemingly trivial, is actually a crucial step in building their brain.
The silent dialogue between the body and the brain
Motor development and cognitive development are not two parallel roads; they are paths that intersect and nourish each other. When your student runs in the playground, their brain does not simply command their legs to move. It must calculate distance, adjust speed, anticipate obstacles, maintain balance. It is a neurologically complex exercise. The neural circuits activated to plan and execute these movements are the same, or very similar, to those that will later be used to plan writing a sentence, organizing ideas, or following a mathematical reasoning. By strengthening motor skills, we are literally preparing the neural ground for more abstract learning. A well "inhabited" body frees up valuable cognitive resources. If a child does not have to expend considerable energy just to sit correctly in their chair, they will have more attention available to listen to your instructions.
Gross motor skills: the foundation of concentration
Gross motor skills involve the large movements of the body: walking, jumping, balancing. They rely on two key sensory systems: the vestibular system (located in the inner ear, it is our internal "GPS" for balance and orientation) and proprioception (the awareness of the position of our limbs in space without needing to look at them). When these systems are immature, the child may feel "lost" in their own body. They may need to move constantly to feel grounded, sway in their chair, fidget. This behavior, often wrongly interpreted as inattention or provocation, is actually a desperate search for sensory anchors. By working on balance and overall coordination, we help the child better regulate their body, find a stable and comfortable posture. This physical stability is the first step towards the attentional stability needed to concentrate in class.
From the throwing hand to the writing hand
Fine motor skills, which allow us to write, cut, or button a garment, do not come from nowhere. They are the culmination of a long process that begins with gross motor skills. For a child to control the small muscles of their hand and fingers with precision, they must first have good control of their trunk, shoulders, and arms. The strength and stability of the trunk are essential to free the arm and hand from their supportive role. It is because they have learned to stabilize their body by climbing a rope ladder that they will later be able to stabilize their wrist to trace fine and regular letters. The link is direct. Ignoring gross motor skills to focus solely on writing is like wanting to build the top floor of a house without laying the foundations.
COCO BOUGE: our playful response to develop motor skills
Aware of this crucial issue, we wanted to create a tool that allows children to work on these fundamental prerequisites in a fun, engaging, and effective way. This is how our application COCO PENSE and COCO BOUGE was born. COCO BOUGE is not just a simple sports app; it is a true motor development program designed in collaboration with psychomotricity experts.
A structured program disguised as a game
The central idea of COCO BOUGE is to offer motor challenges that specifically target the skills required for school learning. The child interacts with the application not by tapping on the screen, but with their whole body. The camera of the tablet or smartphone detects and analyzes their movements. They must jump to catch virtual objects, lean to avoid others, balance on one leg to guide a character. Each game has a precise psychomotor objective, even if for the child, it is just about having fun and earning points. We transform sometimes repetitive exercises into captivating adventures. This gamification is essential to maintain the child's motivation and encourage them to persevere, as repetition is the key to automating motor skills.
Targeted activities for each prerequisite
The COCO BOUGE program is designed to cover the entire spectrum of fundamental motor skills. We have organized the games around several work axes, creating a complete and progressive path for the student. Here are some examples of the skills we develop:
- Static and dynamic balance: Games require the child to hold a posture on one foot or move slowly along a trajectory, directly strengthening their vestibular system.
- Overall coordination and limb dissociation: The child must learn to move their arms and legs independently or in coordination, an essential skill for complex activities like biking or, later, cursive writing.
- Body schema and self-awareness in space: By seeing themselves on the screen and having to interact with virtual elements, the child refines their perception of their own body and its limits, a foundation for spatial orientation on a sheet of paper.
- Motor planning: Before jumping or bending down, the child must anticipate the movement to be made. They learn to plan a sequence of actions, a cognitive skill transferable to problem-solving.
The complementary alliance of COCO PENSE and COCO BOUGE
Our application is a duo. COCO BOUGE takes care of the bodily foundations, while COCO PENSE focuses on higher cognitive functions: working memory, attention, inhibition, mental flexibility. The two are intrinsically linked. A child who improves their concentration through a motor exercise on COCO BOUGE will perform better on a memory game on COCO PENSE. Conversely, by training their ability to stay attentive on COCO PENSE, they will be better able to follow the complex instructions of a motor game on COCO BOUGE. Thus, we offer a 360° approach, recognizing that to think well, one must first move well, and vice versa.
The specific challenge of DYS disorders
For most children, acquiring motor skills happens relatively naturally, through play and exploration. But for some, this path is fraught with obstacles. These are children with neurodevelopmental disorders, particularly "DYS" disorders (dyspraxia, dyslexia, dysorthographia, dyscalculia...). For them, working on coordination and balance is not just beneficial; it is absolutely fundamental.
Dyspraxia: when the gesture does not follow the thought
Dyspraxia, or developmental coordination disorder (DCD), is the DYS disorder most directly related to motor skills. The dyspraxic child knows what they want to do, but they cannot plan, program, and automate the necessary gestures to achieve it. Actions that seem simple to us, like dressing, using cutlery, or writing, represent a colossal mental effort for them, as if they had to relearn the gesture each time. For these students, COCO BOUGE is a valuable rehabilitation tool. It allows them to repeat motor sequences in a playful setting without the pressure of others watching, helping their brain to build and strengthen the motor patterns they lack.
Surprising links with dyslexia and dyscalculia
One might think that dyslexia (reading disorder) is purely a language problem. However, numerous studies show a strong correlation between reading difficulties and weaknesses in balance and rhythm. An influential theory, known as the "cerebellar" theory, suggests that the cerebellum, a brain area heavily involved in motor coordination and balance, also plays a key role in automating skills. Learning to read requires automating the decoding of letters and sounds to free up mental resources for comprehension. If the cerebellum functions less efficiently, this automation (whether for biking or reading) becomes more difficult. Working on balance and rhythm through activities like those in COCO BOUGE could therefore, through a transfer effect, help to smooth out the brain mechanisms necessary for expert reading.
Training teachers: our mission for effective support
Having a powerful tool like COCO is one thing, but knowing how to use it wisely and, more broadly, knowing how to identify and understand the specific needs of students is another. A tool is never as powerful as when it is in the hands of an informed professional. That is why we have developed a comprehensive training offer for primary school teachers. Our flagship training, "Identifying and Supporting DYS Disorders in Primary School", has been designed to give you the keys to understanding and action.
Identifying to better support
The first step in helping a struggling student is to understand the nature of their problems. Our training teaches you to become a keen observer. We provide you with observation grids and clear benchmarks to identify the warning signs of a potential DYS disorder.
You will learn to look beyond the simple "he is clumsy" or "she is slow to write." You will be able to detect signs of possible dyspraxia in pencil grip, dyslexia in eye-hand coordination difficulties, or dyscalculia in spatial orientation problems. This early identification is crucial. It allows for pedagogical adaptations to be put in place even before an official diagnosis is made, thus preventing the student from becoming trapped in a spiral of failure and loss of self-esteem.
A toolbox of concrete strategies
Understanding is good. Acting is better. Our training is resolutely practical. We do not just expose you to the theory of DYS disorders. We provide you with a real "toolbox" of pedagogical strategies that you can use the very next day in your classroom. This toolbox includes:
- Strategies to adapt your materials (fonts, line spacing, visual supports).
- Techniques to lighten cognitive and motor load (dictation to an adult, use of digital tools).
- Ideas for rearranging the classroom space to help students with spatial orientation difficulties.
- Advice on using tools like COCO PENSE and COCO BOUGE in a differentiated manner, creating pathways tailored to the specific needs of each student.
We help you transition from a one-size-fits-all pedagogy to a universal and inclusive pedagogy, where every student, DYS or not, finds the adjustments that allow them to progress at their own pace.
The perfect synergy: a trained teacher and an adapted tool
This is where our vision makes perfect sense. The real magic happens when our two offerings meet. A teacher who has undergone our training on DYS disorders will no longer see COCO BOUGE in the same way.
The tool in the service of pedagogy
For an untrained teacher, COCO BOUGE may be an excellent motor skills game. For a trained teacher, it becomes a pedagogical and rehabilitative instrument of great finesse. You will know exactly why you are offering the balance game on one foot to that little student who reverses letters in a mirror. You will understand the link between the arm-leg coordination exercise and your dyspraxic student's difficulties in laying out their operations in columns. You will be able to use the application's progress data to objectify difficulties, discuss them with parents or health professionals (psychomotrician, speech therapist), and adjust your strategies in class. The tool and knowledge enrich each other.
Building the inclusive school of tomorrow, together
Ultimately, our goal is to empower you, education professionals, to build solid foundations for all your students. The body is the first gateway to learning. By investing time in developing coordination and balance, you are not wasting time on "serious" learning; you are preparing it in the most effective way possible. By training yourself to better understand students with different functioning, you are not specializing for a minority; you are improving your practices for the benefit of the entire class.
At Dynseo, we believe that every child has the potential to build a magnificent house of knowledge. Our role, alongside you, is to ensure that the foundations of this house are deep, stable, and ready to support the greatest ambitions.
The article "Coordination and Balance: COCO BOUGE Develops School Prerequisites" highlights the importance of physical development in children to promote their academic learning. A complementary aspect to this subject is the importance of daily postures to maintain good physical and mental balance. To learn more about the postures to adopt daily, you can consult this relevant article: Which postures should be adopted daily?. This article explores the different postures that can be beneficial for overall well-being, a topic that aligns well with the goals of COCO BOUGE.
