Exercise for Young Children: How Active Should They Be?

Our children are often very active when they are young, with seemingly boundless energy. Children should have a certain amount of exercise each day, spent playing games and doing activities that teach them balance, coordination and general fitness.

What Are the Recommendations?

It’s commonly expected that children require the same amount of physical activity as adults, such as 30-60 minutes a few times a week. However, the NHS recommends your toddler or child under 5 should be engaged in as much as 3 hours of activity per day. This includes playing and moving around, running and jumping and more clearly active play such as climbing, chasing, swimming or paddling in water, riding bikes, or playing with a ball.

The CDC also recommends that children get around 3 hours of exercise each day, in particular including activities that support good bone health and bone growth, such as activities that involve jumping and hopping. Physical activity is a major issue for children in many countries and in the US studies have found that only 1 in 3 children are get enough physical activity each day.

Good Physical Activities in the Early Years

Activities for your preschool-aged child should include a wide range of movements, including things that stimulate balance and coordination, as well as aerobic fitness and strength. At Falcon British Nursery, physical activity is a priority and children are encouraged to move daily and play physical games to keep fit and healthy. For cruisers and early walkers, good games can include Simon Says, where children copy the actions of a teacher, or singing action songs such as Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.

As your child reaches age two or three, they can begin to play in larger spaces and outdoor areas and should be encouraged to run around and improve balance, such as by playing games like football, catching and throwing, climbing trees, or playing on playground structures. Play spaces that include swings and bars can help children to improve their balance and develop their inner ear, by engaging in activities such as swinging or hanging upside-down.

Exercise is a large part of the Falcon British Nursery curriculum and you can have confidence that your children will meet their activity requirements each day while with the nursery staff. 

10 Activities to Support Creativity in a Young Child

Your child’s imagination is endless. The way your child’s imagination grows depends a lot on their age and general stage of development, as well as their day-to-day environment and the attitudes of their teachers.

One of the most interesting developments at the preschool age, around age 3 or 4, is that children enter Piaget’s preoperational period, a period of creative thinking that is marked by a greater understanding of representational thinking. For instance, children are able to see that symbols, drawings and items can represent something else: for example, they begin to understand that the word “horse” or an image of a horse represents a horse in real life. This is the beginning of a phase in which your child begins to create items or images with the intention of representing the things in their life that they see or think about.

Top 10 Activities for Young Children

1.    Use natural spaces. Outdoor spaces such as grass areas in parks, beaches, wetlands and specialty gardens allow your child to learn to be creative with their play using natural materials, including sticks, rocks, plants, water, or natural surfaces to draw on or interact with.

2.    Drawing outdoors. Taking children outside to draw with chalk or watercolour paints on footpaths or rocks can help to stimulate creativity.

3.    Working with art materials. This is a good way to introduce your child to creative activities and a variety of art materials and canvases helps your child to understand artistic nuances and increase vocabulary.

4.    Finger painting. This is a creative and sensory experience in one. Children can explore the physical and sensory experience of painting with their hands, while increasing their understanding of creative representation and colour.

5.    Glue and glitter. Glue and glitter helps a child increase their fine motor control, as well as experimenting with creative ideas of collage. We recommend purchasing bio glitter that will degrade and will not harm the environment.

6.    Baking. Baking, especially decorating cake or cookies, is a creative way for your child to participate in daily life. They can then give this baking to friends or family and take pride in their skills.

7.    Building with Lego or Duplo. This can help your child to increase their spatial awareness and to be creative with building ideas and transport roleplay (such as building train tracks or lego cars).

8.    Making a theatre play. Your children can build the set, puppets, costumes and think about what the play should be like. This is a holistic experience that covers a lot of creative bases.

9.    Facepaint. Facepaint is an excellent foray into roleplay for children, as well as helping them to be creative with their ideas and skills. They can direct adults as to what they want, or paint their faces themselves.

10.  Dress-Ups. Dress-ups are another good creative activity for preschool-aged children, even creating costumes themselves out of found materials or adult clothing. Children aged 3 and 4 will enjoy dressing up as other characters and will use their costumes as imaginative tools.

Your child can grow their creativity in any number of ways and once they reach the preschool-age of being able to represent objects and ideas creatively, their whole world opens up. At Falcon British Nursery your child will always be encouraged to play creatively and will be exposed to the above ideas each and every day.