Why is fitness important for young children?

Care­givers often won­der why fit­ness is so impor­tant for young chil­dren’s devel­op­ment. At Care Cours­es, we offer sev­er­al cours­es hav­ing to do with the sub­ject. This blog will look at a few con­cepts from our course, Fun and Fit­ness: Address­ing Child­hood Obe­si­ty.

The increased rate of child­hood obe­si­ty in recent years has been found to have a direct cor­re­la­tion to the increased rate of seri­ous med­ical con­di­tions as a child and lat­er in life. These med­ical con­di­tions include dia­betes, high blood pres­sure, high cho­les­terol, asth­ma, arthri­tis, and poor health over­all. These con­di­tions are pre­ventable with the prop­er diet and phys­i­cal exer­cise that comes nat­u­ral­ly with being an active child.

It is your respon­si­bil­i­ty as care­givers and teach­ers to offer chil­dren only healthy foods. This means no soda, no fast food, and no heav­i­ly processed snacks. Get­ting the par­ents involved eat­ing healthy will go a long way to mod­el the prop­er eat­ing habits.

Phys­i­cal activ­i­ties should come nat­u­ral­ly to chil­dren of all ages. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s far too easy to have chil­dren watch a movie or tele­vi­sion show and play on a phone or com­put­er to keep them occupied.

It your respon­si­bil­i­ty as a child care provider to ensure that chil­dren stay active by pro­vid­ing many oppor­tu­ni­ties for them to move and be active, both indoors and out­doors, every day. We have blogs on both out­door play activ­i­ties (includ­ing a free course on out­door play!) and indoor play activ­i­ties.

Infants like to bat or kick dan­gling objects as well as reach­ing or crawl­ing toward an object. Roll balls with them or even let them slap a shal­low con­tain­er of water while seat­ed on your lap.

Tod­dlers can have a bit more struc­ture with their phys­i­cal activ­i­ties, such as throw­ing or kick­ing a ball and run­ning around. Chil­dren of this age also like to dance to music as well.

Preschool­ers ben­e­fit from sev­er­al hours of phys­i­cal activ­i­ty each day. This also starts to include games such as hop­scotch and obsta­cle paths.

Look­ing for more ideas and activ­i­ties to keep your kids mov­ing? Take our 2 clock hour (0.2 CEU) course Fun and Fit­ness: Address­ing Child­hood Obe­si­ty and learn the ben­e­fits of phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and prop­er diet. Thank you for reading! 

Please let us know how we can be of addi­tion­al assis­tance! Call us: 1–800-685‑7610, Mon­day through Fri­day, 9–5 ET, or email us days, evenings and week­ends: info@CareCourses.com. We’re here to help!