Children and Physical Exercise
Physical Exercise and Children Activities: Although things may be improving in terms of general public awareness, many medical experts continue to be concerned as to whether or not modern children are getting sufficient physical exercise.
Nollamara Childcare Centre professionals will be keen to ensure that they help as much as possible.
Childcare centres in Nollamara – keeping kids active
It’s a shocking fact that about 25% of boys in the age range 2-7 are overweight or obese in Australia. The figure for girls is only slightly better, at around 23% but oddly, in the 2-4 age group the overweight problem becomes much higher and much faster for girls, with around 25% being overweight or obese by the age of 4 whereas only 15% of boys in the same age group are.
It’s only around the age of 6-7 that boys catch girls up in that respect.
The health implications of those figures are now clear and relatively undisputed. They may not manifest at younger ages but children that are overweight in their early childhood have a tendency to take that forward into their teenage years and later life, with all the negative health implications that can have.
Essentially, most experts agree that it’s critically important to try and keep younger children’s weight within healthy norms.
That usually involves a combination of diet and exercise. It’s the latter we’ll concentrate on here.
Physical Exercise – why it has become a concern
The role of physical exercise in maintaining a healthy weight is now well known. At its simplest level and ignoring unusual medical conditions, we all take calories in and our bodies either burn them as energy or store them as fat. If we’re burning roughly the same number of calories as we’re consuming then if all other things are equal, our weight will be stable.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has conducted surveys which indicate that only 23% of Australian children take the minimum recommended 60 minutes of physical exercise each day (games, sports, play etc.). By contrast, even children as young as 2-4 are spending over 80 minutes each day relatively stable, sitting or lying down, engaged in screen-based activities.
This is potentially a health and excess weight nightmare.
The human body, notably in early and mid-life, is not designed to be sedentary. Particularly in children and younger people, the body needs regular and demanding physical exercise in order to burn calories and also to expand, develop and maintain things like the cardio-vascular, respiratory and immune systems plus the body’s skeletal and muscular systems. Children who do not have active physical exercise are now known to suffer a far greater vulnerability to a whole range of medical conditions including obesity.
For all these reasons and many more, we are committed to providing children with multiple and regular opportunities to engage in physical exercise play and activities involving exercise.
The origin of exercise isn’t important
Children naturally like running around a lot – even at times when they shouldn’t! However, that’s a great base to build upon in terms of physical exercise.
What we then do is to provide games and teaching exercises which involve physical activity so we can channel that natural exuberance and energy. We’ll back that up with plenty of time playing outside and again, running and dancing etc.
In the end, what’s important is not whether the exercise is a game or a lesson incorporating physical activity, all that matters is that children are stretching their muscles.
We’ll give them every possible opportunity to do so.
If you’d like to know more about our Nollamara childcare centre, why not call us and arrange an appointment to pop along and have a look around? We’d love to meet you!
