Physical Fitness

Kimber Taylor
Week 5

                                                                       

What is physical activities and why is physical fitness so important in our children?

Physical activity has been defined as bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that results in energy expenditure.  How does this help our children?

• Exercise help maintain healthy bones and muscles.
• Physical exercise keeps away obesity in children
• It promotes social well being because they are interacting with other children.
• It helps in overall growth, development and strength
• Exercise can sometime help children perform better in school.

Physical inactivity has become a serious problem in the United States. More than half of U.S. adults and children do not meet recommended levels of moderate physical activity, and one-fourth engage in no leisure time physical activity at all (PHYSICAL ACTIVITY, 1996). Inactivity is more prevalent among those with lower income and education, and, beginning in adolescence, affects females more than males (NIH, 1995; Physical Activity, 1996). A pattern of inactivity,  begins early in life, making the promotion of physical activity among children imperative. In addition to being physically active, children need to learn fundamental motor skills and develop health related physical fitness. Physical education, provided at school and recess in day cares is an ideal way to encourage activity and develop fitness among children and, for many children, will be their only preparation for an active lifestyle.

Daily large motor activities are necessary component of a child care program.  A caregiver who encourages exercise in the child care daily program provides a broad base for nutritional risk management.  Encouraging all children to be physically active and providing daily large motor activities to ensure this allows the caregiver to promote good health and well being.  Children expend energy in all of the following typical large motor activities:

• Running
• Throwing balls
• Climbing jungle gyms
• Swinging
• Digging in the sand
• Pulling wagons, pushing toys, riding tricycles
• Jumping
• Walking
• Dancing or moving

We should also promote physical activity between teachers and parents by providing extracurricular physical activity programs. Interested parents might be encouraged to establish developmentally appropriate clubs and/or intramural activities of a competitive and noncompetitive nature. Walking clubs, in-line skating, jumping rope, water aerobics, and intramural swim teams provide a few examples. We should also encourage and enable parental involvement in physical activity. Parental activity level is very important in promoting activity among children. Schools can help encourage activity in parents by sending home activity homework that parents and children do together, recruiting parent volunteers for physical education classes, and sponsoring parent-child activity programs at school.  If you look at the children in any playground and you will see how they maintain their levels of fitness. The children never stay still, they run around and play chase. The balls or the jump ropes come into play and the children are enjoying a comprehensive fitness routine whether they realise it or not. Children take part in basketball, soccer and kickball. Gym class and dance is another excellent way of keeping fit.   A child that is a more active child makes for a much more pleasant child. There is direct correlation between how active a child is, and how much happier they are. Physical fitness releases their stress, pent up energy, boredom, uneasiness, and restlessness.

A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged.  If they are taught early about physical fitness it will be repeated throughout their life.




References:

PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND HEALTH: A REPORT OF THE SURGEON GENERAL. (1996). Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

National Institutes of Health. (1995). PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH: NIH CONSENSUS STATEMENT. Kensington, MD: NIH Consensus Program Information Center.

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