March 2006
Moving is Learning: Why Physical Fitness Is so Important for Young Children
It’s 5:30 a.m. Sandra grabs a cup of coffee and runs out the door to make her morning spinning class. Joe wouldn’t miss his daily runs after work. Teri finds yoga to be the perfect relaxation break during a busy day with her 3-year-old twins.
Routines sound familiar? Now, more than ever, fitness is becoming an essential part or our adult lives. Most of us know that exercise helps to prevent obesity, heart disease and a host of other ailments brought on by inactivity. Now that adults are seeing the light, what can we do for our kids to keep them healthy and fit?
The Importance of Physical Activity in Children
Physical inactivity has contributed to the unprecedented epidemic of childhood obesity in the United States. The percentage of children considered overweight has more than doubled in the past 30 years, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many of these children will grow up to become overweight or obese adults, contributing to the almost $100 billion estimated annual cost of obesity-related diseases in this country.
The National Association for Sport and Physical Education has developed activity guidelines entitled “Active Start: Physical Activity for Children Birth to 5 Years.” It recommends that preschoolers engage in unstructured physical activity whenever possible, and that they avoid being sedentary for more than an hour at a time. The preschool years are a time to develop competence in movement skills that are the building blocks for more complex skills throughout life, the report states.
Numerous federal studies confirm that regular physical activity helps children to build and maintain healthy bones, muscles and joints, and to control weight, build lean muscle and reduce fat. Exercise prevents or delays the development of high blood pressure, reduces feelings of depression and anxiety, and may increase children’s capacity for learning.
Lauren Leiker, director of St. Mark’s Cathedral Preschool in Seattle, explains that when preschoolers exercise, it helps them regulate their sleeping and eating as well. “We find that some of the most obvious obstacles to learning and overall health are lack of sleep and unhealthy eating habits,” she says. “When children are eating and sleeping well and allowed ample opportunity to expel physical energy, they tend to see more success in other areas of development.”
Physically active children have a greater chance of staying active and healthy for a lifetime, according to Marla Donaldson, a Bellevue Community College preschool teacher. “During the preschool years, children (and their parents) create the lifestyle they will follow in their growing years,” she emphasizes. “High activity, time at the park, outside time, time jumping on the old mattress in the corner of the family room, all unstructured activity sets the tone for later activity levels for a child and family.”
The development of basic motor skills is of the utmost importance for preschool children. It is skills such as throwing, catching, kicking, hopping and skipping that become the tools for children to use in participating in physical activity throughout their lives.
How Can We ‘Teach Fitness’ to Our Kids?
Anyone who has watched a child ride a bike solo for the first time, run full-tilt across an open field, or connect a bat to a ball with a solid smack knows that children delight in physical accomplishment and enjoy movement for its own sake. Children use movement to express feelings, manipulate objects and learn about their world.
How do we, as adults, use a child’s natural enthusiasm for movement to help them become physically fit? The answer is deceptively simple: moving is learning.
According to Stephen Sanders, author of Active for Life: Developmentally Appropriate Movement Programs for Young Children, children learn by doing. Children should be active participants, not passive listeners or observers. To learn how to climb, throw a ball, jump or do any other physical skill, children need a variety of practice opportunities over time and within many contexts, he states.
Children need appropriate movement programs; they need room to move; and they need the tools to help them develop skills.
Many parents feel that organized, competitive team activities, such as soccer, T-ball or gymnastics, can meet a young child’s fitness needs. While children do learn physical skills in such programs and some children thrive in such an environment, many parents observe that competitive programs do not fully engage every child.
“Physical activity should emphasize self-improvement, participation and cooperation instead of competition and winning or losing,” Sanders writes. The frustration of losing and comparing oneself to others can deter some children from participating in any physical activity.
Children need to be given many opportunities to practice running, galloping, balancing, jumping and throwing. Kids need space! Research indicates that children burn more calories playing outdoors than indoors and that they move more in larger spaces than in smaller ones. Most adults look back on time spent with their peers in “the neighborhood” fondly, remembering games of tag, kick the can, hopscotch, and jump rope.
Neighborhood play may be one of the simplest, easiest and best ways for young children to gain physical fitness and to practice their physical skills. Ironically, classes, organized team sports and “play dates” have, in many instances, replaced neighborhood play.
Go Outside!
Just beyond the neighborhood, our local park playgrounds help our children’s development in a variety of ways. Playground equipment enhances children’s natural desire to climb and challenges them to traverse overhead ladders or access and slide down slides. Structures can also be the center of group activities that stimulate fantasy play and chase games. Children also learn to negotiate, compete and/or cooperate.
Playgrounds are great, but never underestimate the positive effects a simple walk in the woods can have on young children. Children as young as 2 or 3 are perfectly capable of short walks without the aid of a stroller. An adventure out of doors can be a wonderful way to spend the day with family and at the same time can challenge a young child’s sense of balance, his stamina and his coordination. In addition, the possibility for wonder and discovery are limitless.
Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, writes, “Natural spaces and materials stimulate children’s limitless imaginations and serve as the medium of inventiveness and creativity observable in almost any group of children playing in a natural setting.”
Tim Bennett, a Seattle Waldorf kindergarten teacher, begins every school day, rain or shine, with a one and one-half hour walk through nearby Woodland Park. The walk becomes Bennett’s “outdoor classroom,” where movement possibilities are endless. “After our morning walk I can tell a 20-minute fairy tale and hear a pin drop. The kids are active listeners, better at being quiet,” he says. “If a child can’t sit still, as smart as they may be, they will have difficulties learning. We, (Waldorf), try to build a foundation through movement and learning through doing. Kids plant a garden, study life in a mud puddle and use movement in practical ways.”
“Have the appropriate clothing so that you and your child can go outside EVERY DAY,” advises Donaldson. “Nothing encourages physical activity like being outdoors. Go to the park, to your backyard, to wild places to enjoy nature and to get the kinks out. Create adventures with bikes, hiking boots, tents, a blanket on the grass, the sprinkler, umbrellas, or a place in the yard to dig.
“When adults think about their favorite activities as a child, they were usually outdoors, with no special equipment, not ‘supervised,’ but creative, like building a tree house. For me it was making forts in the tall grass in the vacant lot next door to our home. How can you encourage activities like those for your child?”
Tools for Fitness
“Learning to move is like learning to read, write or understand principles of math and science,” Sanders writes in Active for Life. “Just as reading requires books … developing skill in physical activity requires the manipulation of balls, beanbags, paddles, scarves, hoops, ropes and other objects. A variety of materials are essential in any movement program for young children.”
Children can practice skills like jumping, balance and throwing indoors with very simple tools. For example, Sanders suggests a game called “Crossing the Stream” for practicing jumping. “With two pieces of string create two lines that start out touching and angle away from each other. Find the widest place each child can jump across. Try hopping on one foot, leaping, and jumping backwards.”
For balance, Sanders suggests a game called “Walk in the Woods.” Two liter soda bottles are “planted” on the floor (in various locations). Children walk, skip and hop through the “forest,” navigating the obstacles.
For throwing, Sanders recommends a game of “Newspaper Delivery.” Children throw rolled-up newspapers at a drawing of a house attached to the wall above a large box. The fun possibilities of kid’s “fit-tools” are endless.
Our Schools in Action
Local preschool teachers are making physical activity an important part of their education programs.
Waldorf teacher Bennett incorporates the “circus arts” to help his kids gain physical skills. Bennett’s students balance on his shoulders or on stilts or swing on a trapeze. Bennett uses vivid picture language to keep the children engaged. “The circus arts are all inclusive, and actually more fun with a larger number of children,” he notes.
Chris Roth, a teacher at the Giddens School in Seattle, includes a variety of games in his lessons that include fitness “tools.” For example, he describes a ball-catching game in which “students first catch with two hands, then one hand, then the left (non-dominant) hand, then clap before catching. I ask them how many times they can clap before catching, if they can spin, clap behind their backs, sit down and stand up, all before they catch the ball,” he adds. Roth makes the point that “students have a high success rate in PE because the goals are personal and can always be improved.”
At University Child Development School in Seattle, physical education specialist Kerrie Hecko combines fitness tools with imagination to keep her students active. “Equipment and activities alone can spark physical activity in a preschooler, but turning it into an adventure or making it magical will capture the attention of even the most couch-potato prone child,” she says.
“Why jump when you can bob up and down like a marshmallow floating in hot chocolate? Why leap over cones when you can hurdle the trees and reach for sunbeams as you go? Why go through an obstacle course when you can search over and under and through for hidden treasure? This may seem hokey, but I can tell you from years of experience that a little creativity sparks interest in a 3-year-old and maintains it in a 10-year-old.”
At The Little School in Bellevue, preschool teacher Ellen Kaspi incorporates Anne Gilbert Green’s “brain dance” theory in her weekly creative movement sessions. “Brain Dance” is a sequence of movements based on the concept of the neurological connection to movement patterns from birth to toddlerhood,” Kaspi explains. Students are moving the entire 30 minutes, alternating fast-paced large motor activities with slower activities, such as yoga or rolling balls.
“Physical activity provides children an opportunity to explore the world with their bodies and helps them become healthy, vibrant, complete human beings,” Kaspi concludes. “If the physical part of their lives is thriving, it can’t help but contribute to other aspects of their development, learning and growth.”
Lori Broznowski is a Bellevue mother of two and has been a fitness instructor for more than 20 years. She and her daughter walk a mile to and from school each day.
For Further Reading
Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005.
Active for Life: Developmentally Appropriate Movement Programs for Young Children, by Steven W. Sanders, National Associates for the Education of Young Children, Human Kinetics Publishers, 2002.
Smart Moves: Why Learning is Not All in Your Head, by Carla Hannaford, Ph.D., Great Ocean Publishers, 1995.
You Are Your Child’s First Teacher, by Rahima Baldwin-Dancy, Celestial Arts Publishing, 1989.
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