Active play is essential to the optimal physical development and overall health of young children. Physical activity embedded throughout the preschool day promotes children’s ability to attend to, learn, and regulate their emotional responses. Active physical play not only enhances the body’s physiological functions (i.e., physical fitness), it promotes optimal brain chemistry for self-regulation and enhances learning readiness. As such, it should be fully integrated into the regular preschool day.
Figure 13.10: This young boy is engaged in unstructured active play.[1]
Figure 13.11: Completing an obstacle course is structured active play.[2]
Active physical play contributes markedly to enhancing children’s fundamental movement skills in three principal areas: balance, locomotion, and both gross and fine motor manipulation. Both typically developing children and those with special needs benefit. Furthermore, the perceptual-motor components also discussed earlier are promoted through active physical play. Activities that promote body awareness, spatial awareness, and directional awareness engage the senses as children move through space. To derive the maximum health-related benefits, children should engage in active play on most days of the week, in an environment that promotes enjoyment, safety, and success. These benefits include increases in muscular strength, muscular endurance, and joint flexibility as well as improved aerobic endurance and body composition. Proper nutrition and adequate hydration also play important roles in young children’s active physical play.
Young children can be easily engaged in movement and benefit immensely from an active way of life. The habits of physical activity that children learn in the early years greatly increase the chance that children will continue being physically active throughout childhood and beyond. Most importantly, children must see active play as fun. Your regular participation with children will do much to model the joy of moving. You can take almost any indoor or outdoor physical activity, give it a name, and make it a game. Children are active learners. For most, physical activity is fun. Your enthusiastic participation with children will go a long way to motivate them for continued active play.
Active Physical Play includes:
Active Participation
Cardiovascular Endurance
Muscular Strength, Muscular Endurance, and Flexibility
Active Participation
Young children need to be involved in moderate to vigorous physical activity almost daily, at home and at school. Moderate to vigorous activity that is enjoyable, develop-mentally appropriate, and adapted to the needs of each child increases children’s physical fitness levels. When the large muscles of the body are fully engaged, young children learn more effectively and also derive important health and physical fitness benefits. Active physical play contributes measurably to all aspects of physical fitness. Physical fitness is defined as a set of physical attributes related to a person’s ability to perform activities that require cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, and joint flexibility.
Figure 13.12: Parachute play is a favorite of many children and a great way to get them actively participated.[3]
1.0 Active Participation
At around 48 months of age
At around 60 months of age
1.1 Initiate or engage in simple physical activities for a short to moderate period of time.
1.1 Initiate more complex physical activities for a sustained period of time.
Teachers can support active participation with the following:
Provide ample opportunities for children to engage daily in active play. It is widely recommended that children accumulate at least 60 minutes and up to several hours of unstructured physical activity on each day of the week.
Create inviting activity environments in which children can be physically active.
Help children identify appropriate places for different types of physical activity.
Create an activity environment that is nurturing and supportive and allows likely success.
Encourage children to continue participation by providing opportunities for short but frequent rest periods during vigorous activity.
Ensure that physical activity is sustained by providing personally mean-ingful and purposeful opportunities for children.
Recognize and take into account any environmental constraints.
Encourage physical exploration through play equipment and materials.
Respect differences in children’s temperament and find creative ways to engage all children in active physical play.
Research Highlight: Does Increasing Children’s Physical Activity Really Make a Difference?
A decisive “yes” was the answer to this important question which was cited in a review of 850 research articles and published in the Journal of Pediatrics. The evidence strongly supported that children of school age who engage in relatively high levels of physical activity are less overweight than inactive children, have better cardiovascular endurance, and higher levels of muscular strength, endurance, and higher self-concepts. The authors conclude that “Increasing thelevel of habitual moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity in youth is a health promotion and disease-prevention strategy. Sedentary youngsters should progress toward the recommended level of physical activity gradually.”[4]
Sources:
W. B. Strong and others, “Evidence Based Physical Activity for School-Age Youth,” The Journal of Pediatrics 146, no. 6 (2005): 732–37.
A. Ignico, C. Richart, and V. Wayda, “The Effects of a Physical Activity Program on Children’s Activity Level, Health-Related Fitness, and Health,” Early Childhood Development 154 (1999): 31–39.
Cardiovascular Endurance
This involves exposing the body to an increased workload that raises the heart rate beyond its normal range of beats per minute and sustains that elevated rate for several minutes.
Figure 13.13: Pedaling a trike with a passenger is a great activity to get the heart pumping.[5]
2.0 Cardiovascular Endurance
At around 48 months of age
At around 60 months of age
2.1 Engage in frequent bursts of active play that involves the heart, the lungs, and the vascular system.
2.1 Engage in sustained active play of increasing intensity that involves the heart, the lungs, and the vascular system.
Teachers can support children’s development of cardiovascular endurance with the following:
Design the physical setting of the play environment to encourage moderate or vigorous physical activity.
Engage children of all ability levels in activities that promote increased cardiovascular endurance.
Promote increased cardiovascular endurance through chasing and fleeing activities.
Promote cardiovascular endurance through the use of riding toys that require sustained pedaling or cranking.
Use imagery as an effective tool in promoting moderate to vigorous physical activity.
Provide positive encouragement for participation.
Promote increased physical activity through story plays.
Promote cardiovascular endurance through dance and rhythmic activities.
Muscular Strength, Muscular Endurance, and Flexibility
Active children naturally increase their muscular strength, muscular endurance, and joint flexibility.
Muscular strength is the ability to perform one maximum effort, such as lifting a heavy weight over-head, or picking up a heavy object off the ground.
Figure 13.14: Lifting these pumpkins onto the scale shows muscular strength.[6]
Muscular endurance is the ability to perform work repeatedly. (It is not recommended that children prior to puberty engage in maximum strength efforts through high-resistance activities. Instead, it is recommended that children engage in low-resistance activities with multiple repetitions.)
Flexibility is the ability of a joint to move through its full, intended range of motion.
3.0 Muscular Strength, Muscular Endurance, and Flexibility
At around 48 months of age
At around 60 months of age
2.1 Engage in active play activities that enhance leg and arm strength, muscular endurance, and flexibility.
2.1 Engage in increasing amounts of active play activities that enhance leg and arm strength, muscular endurance, and flexibility.
Keep this important concept in mind when planning activities for children. Low-resistance activities that are continually repetitive— such as swimming, riding a tricycle, or pushing one’s wheelchair up a gradual incline or around the playground, walking distances, running, and jumping—will promote both muscular endurance and
Teachers can support children’s developing muscular strength, muscular endurance, and flexibility with the following:
Encourage the development of muscular strength and endurance through building activities that involve per-forming “work” repeatedly.
Promote cardiovascular endurance through repeated muscular endurance activities.
Promote muscular endurance and strength in the muscles of the upper body through the use of playground equipment that encourages climbing, hanging, and swinging.
Allow for supervised risk taking.
Engage children in the setup of the play space and the return of materials to their original space.
Promote increased joint flexibility through animal walks, nursery rhymes, and story plays.
Encourage practice in fundamental movement skills and perceptual-motor activities that contribute to children’s physical fitness.[7]
Vignette
When the weather permits, Ms. Jennifer takes her class outdoors to play in the designated play space. She is intrigued by the many types of activities in which her children choose to engage. She is quick to notice that several are in almost perpetual motion, running to and fro with seemingly endless energy and little purpose to their activity. Others tend to gravitate to the sandbox and other fine motor activities. Still others are hesitant to explore and reluctant to participate in any self-initiated free-play activities.
Knowing the importance of active physical play, Ms. Jennifer develops strategies intended to maximize meaningful participation in a variety of activities that promote active participation by all, cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, and joint flexibility. These strategies take into account children’s personal preferences, likes and dislikes, and sense of success and accomplishment.
Over several months of engaging in active play with children and encouraging them to try new things, she notices a decided change in behavior. The children are now more fully engaged in play activities that are purposeful, meaningful, safe, and fun. [8]
