This paper stresses the importance of perceptual-motor orientation in the child as a foundation for the symbolic and conceptual activities of the classroom. Consistent and efficient motor patterns permit the child to explore his environment and systematize his relationship to it. Perceptual data are similarly systematized by comparing them with this motoric system. Through such perceptual-motor matching, the perceptual world of the child and his behavioral world come to coincide. It is with this organized system of perceptual input and behavioral output that the child attacks and manipulates symbolic and conceptual material in a veridical fashion.