Encouraging Physical Activity in Preschoolers

                                 Encouraging Physical Activity in Preschoolers


   Professor Steve Sanders sheds light on the importance of  traveling skills (chase,flee,dodge..) which he considers initial activities that are designed to help children explore their surroundings and that might have influence on their language development. To support his point he states some examples:

•   The transition from crawling to walking corresponds with an increase in infant receptive and productive language.
•    Walking infants show larger vocabularies than crawling infants.
•    The acquisition of an upright posture increases the infants visual field and permits greater flexibility with which to view the environment.
•     Three to five old infants with faster rate of learning to sit independently show larger receptive vocabularies.

  According to research infants and toddlers who develop a strong base of locomotive skills tend to use those skills to be physically active as adults.Therefor, the relationship between skills and physical activity is reciprocal.It is expected that as motor skills competences increases, physical participation also increases and that the increased participation feeds back into motor skills competences.
 These locomotive skills are basic and natural and everyone is able to do them.They can be :

1.    Rhythmic example: jumping,hopping or leaping
2.    Uneven rhythmic example: skipping,galloping or sliding.

They also include chasing,fleeing and dodging. These skills not only delight children, but also help them in many sports throughout life like in playing basketball or hockey.
In teaching and practicing these skills Professor Sanders insists on the movement concept which
enables the children to understand how and where the body can move and the relationship the body has when it is in motion. Here, he presents three forms of awareness:

•       Space Awareness: to learn where the body moves in which direction,pathway,level or space for example: high,low.right,straight...
•        Effort Awareness: to learn how the body moves with speed,dimensions,force or rhythm for example: slow,strong,fast......
•        Body Awareness: to learn the relationship the body creates with itself,other movers and objects around for example: follow ,lead.myself,with a partner...

He also instructs on how to present locomotive activities to young children. Thus by:

1.     Practicing everyday.
2.     Setting boundaries.
3.     Demonstrating the uses for each skill.
4.     Placing children in a variety of situations so they can practice different contexts.