Jacqueline Goodway began her research career over 35 years ago at Michigan State University, after coming to MSU from England. While completing her doctoral degree, she joined a College of Education initiative as a graduate assistant working in Flint Public Schools. Little did she know, this experience would change the course of her life’s work.

Originally seeking to research sports injuries in youth gymnastics, Goodway observed many young children in Flint were not developing the necessary physical movement and motor skills required in a child’s first years. These skills are the key physical and muscle movements children must develop for both an active life and everyday function.

As there was no programming for early childhood motor skill intervention, Goodway founded the Successful Kinesthetic Instruction for Preschoolers, or SKIP. Becoming one of the first researchers to pursue this type of intervention, the SKIP framework has been used by researchers across the world to boost motor skill development.

Now, Goodway, who is a Red Cedar Distinguished Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at the College of Education, has returned to MSU to bring this work back to where it started.

With over a decade of research collaboration with Nalda Wainwright, associate professor in health and physical literacy at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David in the U.K., they developed the Mini Movers application – to make teaching motor skill development accessible to all educators and families.

The need for motor skill development

Goodway began running SKIP programs with her research team to train early childhood teachers on how they can best teach these skills in their classrooms. She traveled across schools and communities in 20 states in the U.S. and a dozen countries reaching four continents.

“We have reached a point in society where many children start life with delays in critical motor skills like throwing, running and catching,” Goodway said. “While we might think that these skills would develop naturally, this is not true and without intervention children will go on to sedentary lives and later health challenges. SKIP was developed to rectify such delays and provide children with a fun way to develop the foundational skills they need to be active and healthy.”

Through years of understanding how to best deliver these interventions, Goodway developed a series on how educators can lead the interventions on their own.

The pandemic made it tougher to convey these interventions when students were not in the classroom. However, it did illuminate the avenue and importance of furthering these skills outside the classroom.

“The piece that kept coming back to us was that we were not addressing was the role of parents,” Goodway said. “As part of my research, we had undertaken some parent workshops and showed them how to work with their child at home. Many parents would still tell us they wanted more guidance on how they can teach these skills, and so that was the idea for how the Mini Movers app came to fruition."

How the Mini Movers app works

The Mini Movers app was built with 30-plus years of research data behind it from Goodway, and over a decade of collaboration with Wainwright. It was designed with activities averaging five to 10 minutes. When routines get established, children can build up those skills.

The research team has kept the app priced at $5 to ensure it remains accessible to people, especially in more vulnerable communities. For about the cost of one cup of coffee, parents can invest in their child’s development.

“The communities and schools that embrace SKIP and the Mini Movers app report active, skilled and healthy children ready to learn in the classroom, classroom environments that embed movement throughout the day, and families that recognize the value of movement activities at home,” Goodway said.

They engineered movement environments to align with children's development, separating the activities into four worlds to bring fun, with the goal to continuously integrate more games and functions.

As what’s ahead for Mini Movers, while it has been widely shared in Wales and other locations in the U.K., the goal is to bring it to more families and classrooms in the U.S., and Goodway and Wainwright are seeking to translate Mini Movers into many languages and fund a larger study on the impact of the Mini Movers app on children’s motor skills and health as well as their cognitive development.

The impact of this work

Goodway has heard from families about the impact in households, as families are playing together and moving together each night via the app. As families adopted these activities, the researchers knew the app would have an impact.

More specifically, she recalls stories for families and educators in impoverished communities.

In one situation, Goodway recalls tears rolling down the face of a school principal – but they were tears of joy – because the activities were a powerful way for children and their mothers from abusive families to not just build these skills, but to also laugh and have fun while doing so.

“Mini Movers has been incredibly well received, and the kids love it,” Goodway said. “The kids will get their mom's phone not to game on it, but to use the app. They will tell their friends to play with them and so it has been a lovely disruptor of sedentary behaviors at home.”

The users have also become very multigenerational as well. Grandparents as well as older brothers and sisters are helping their younger siblings, so everyone is jumping in to participate.

“This research and work all started for me at Michigan State University,” she said. “Returning to MSU has been poetic in a way and is a full circle moment. I am back here, continuing my work with SKIP, and eager to expand Mini Movers.”