In the US, approximately 61% of preschoolers spend a significant portion of their day in some form of non-parental childcare setting (i.e., preschool center or Head Start). Thus, the preschool center presents a valuable opportunity to help preschoolers develop healthy physical activity habits. Unfortunately, within the preschool day, most children spend most of their time participating in sedentary activities. Within the preschool environment, teachers’ encouragement and role modeling of physical activity have been shown to positively impact preschoolers’ activity levels. Teachers can also directly alter the preschool day to make it more physically active, such as introducing activity breaks into the day and incorporating physical activity into academic lesson plans (i.e., circle time).
For activity breaks, the best time to implement a classroom-based physical activity break is between two indoor activities, such as transitioning from small-group activities to a large-group activity. The number of times that teachers incorporate activity breaks into their daily schedule depends on their preschool schedule. However, ideally, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, if the children can go outside, and more frequently if they will be confined indoors due to the weather.
Another way to get children to be more active during the preschool day involves teachers incorporating activities into their academic lesson plans. For example, instead of using either small or large group activities to teach numbers, teachers could use physical activity to teach and reinforce them (see attached lesson plan).