Webinar: Encouraging Physical Activity in Preschoolers

The attended webinar was under the title “Encouraging Physical Activity in Preschoolers” by Dr. Steve Sanders. Dr. Sanders emphasized on the locomotors that first develop naturally within kids starting at the age of three months when infants are capable of changing their bodies then crawling at the age of 1 year.

Not only motor skills are important for physical movement of kids, but also toddlers who develop strong base of motor skills tend to be more physically active as adults. One important study has shown that placing infants on their stomach and not on their back positions scores higher motor development. Also, traveling skills have a great impact on social and language development of infants in which their language becomes more productive when they make the transition from crawling to walking.

In addition to that, the professor talked about movement concepts which include: space awareness relates to space, directions, levels and pathways; effort awareness is related to time, force and control of movement and body awareness relates the body parts, roles, locations and body shapes. In schools, locomotor activities must be practiced everyday by giving children some hints for each skill and placing them in different situations. For example chasing, fleeing and dodging activities are very important in which each of them can be practiced differently. 

For example, tag game is very popular in this domain in which children can be practiced in schools. Before starting, tell students about safe tagging and that this game does not exclude any children when being tagged.

Then present some guidelines such as the player who gets tagged immediately freezes. Then to unfreeze this player, there are several game variations such as name tag, tunnel tag, high five tag and math tag….  Such games, children practice traveling skills along with having experience with movement concepts.