When promoting early child care
education one is not just of ABC, 123’s, and colors, but also physical
development like gross and fine motor skills. This development helps students
develop healthy active habits and avoid issues like obesity and other health
issues. A healthy diet alone is not enough to develop a strong and healthy body
and maintain a healthy weight and size. Diet alone also cannot provide the
energy needed to learn and develop skills.
Skills
developed from a healthy active life
-Running
-Jumping
-Skipping
-Hopping
-Walking
Mastering these skills helps
children learn other skills such as
-Throwing
-Kicking
-Catching
Lack of physical education can
lead to
-Obesity
-Diabetes
-Heart
problems
-Learning
disabilities
-Under
development and growth
Unhealthy
and overweight children may experience
-Depression
-Low
self esteem
-Low
self-worth
Adults can help children avoid
the issues that come with a lack of physical fitness and exercise. Action is
the best way for an adult to help demonstrate how important physical fitness
and exercise is. Sharing information with the families such as articles or web
based videos can help adults and children learn how to improve their physical
fitness.
There are many indoor and outdoor
activities that can be done to help promote the development of locomotors
skills (gross motor skills) and fine motor skills. These activities can be
simple and easy for example Red Light, Green Light. An adult calls out random
red light (meaning stop), yellow light (meaning walk), and green light (meaning
run). This is a great activity to do outside where there is room for the
children to move around. This activity promotes locomotors skills and body
control.
A good indoor activity is called
Clean that Room. This is where an adult divides the play area in half. Soft
items like cotton balls are scattered on both sides of the room. Each side has
the same amount of children. When the time starts the children are trying to
keep the cotton balls off their side of the room. When two minutes have passed
the students will stop and count the amount of items left on their side of the
room. The side with the least amount wins. This activity also promotes
locomotors skills and fine motor skills like hand eye coordination by picking
up the items with their hands and throwing them.
Without the proper health habits
including physical fitness and exercise children are at risk for health
problems, obesity, and in some cases self- worth. It is our responsibility as
adults to teach children healthy physical and exercise habits. Time for some
action!!
Food for thought: Action is
eloquence. - Shakespeare
Reference
"Inspirational Thoughts About Action, Inspirational
Sayings On Action." Inspirational, Motivational Thoughts, Quotes,
Proverbs, Sayings and Pictures. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2012.
<http://www.picture-thoughts.com/Action_thoughts.html>.
Robertson, C. (2010). Safety, nutrition, and health
in early education (4th ed.). Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Ms. Alexander,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with this post. It is a shame that in most Early Childhood Education programs including elementary schools recess and physical education is the first extracurricular that is cut due to funding. However, administrators fail to realize that wile cutting the PE department in order to have textbooks(etc.), students are at risk to become obese, which can cause a lack of focus where students will eventually fall behind.
It is a vicious cycle and your blog provides several tips for teachers to help break it. The Clean this Room activity is a very easy solution for teachers who do not have a PE class for their students. This is a game that can easily be done in the classroom with out any cost or equipment.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your blog on physical fitness and children. I also think that physical fitness is a helpful tool that we have to use to help children to become as active as possible. Children love to run, jump, and play so if we encourage then to do so we will be ahead of the game. In addition to encouraging them we must also provide them with examples when we as adults practice physical fitness.