COVID-19: Building physical exercise into the day using these tips - expert comment
31 March 2020
Professor Helen Bilton, an expert in outdoor education from the University of Reading said:
“With schools looking set to be closed for all but children of key workers for some time ahead, many parents are rightly thinking about incorporating some physical exercise into the day to keep their children active.
"Exercise classes are all well and good, but for many kids their main form of exercise is the less structured play and activity that they are doing across the school day, in the playground or rushing between lessons. There are lots of ways that physical activity can be incorporated across the whole of the day rather than only 30 minutes in the morning."
Tips include:
- Stairs (outside any form of incline), use them for exercise literally just walk up and down. See how puffed out you all get! Challenge yourself to improve the number by the end of the week. When walking up and down, dependent on the age: count the steps, recite the Periodic table, practice your times tables (one step one multiple of). Ask the question when you get to the top what type of number do I always get when at the top? Answer: odd number.
These ideas are based on the research carried out in a Portuguese children’s center, with children aged 1 and half to 2 and half and demonstrated the impact of getting young children to move and all the time. We found the hill in the Portuguese children’s center as the most impactful piece of equipment for developing all round physical skills including confidence.
- Use this time to help your child achieve something in terms of physical development which they can show/talk about when they get back to school/nursery.
For example: ride a 2 -wheeler bike, catch a ball, bat a ball, skip, hop, run at speed, dress themselves, be potty trained, all of these need to be taught. For a young child simply learning to go up and down the stairs could be something to learn.
This research highlights the phases and stages of movement development that young children must go through to achieve what is called the Fundamental stage of motor development.
- If you don’t have the resources, or the resources for inside eg: a ball, get two socks or more and fold them into each other. Skipping if you don’t have a rope or space you can actually skip on the spot, the same for hopping.
This research at a 3-11 primary school in Oxfordshire demonstrated how children don’t need the real thing, a stick can become a letter, a cooking pot stand, food for the dragon, a lightsaber.
- Set up an obstacle course for children to use at their own speed. A rope or piece of material or towel to walk along, a rope or towel in a circle to jump into and out of, the stairs to crawl up and down as close to the ground as possible, rolled up socks to throw into a basket ( but you can use any container).
My whole working career has been about creating for free! Principle 8 from Bilton (1998 first edition) children need versatile equipment and environments.
- Try to be open minded, your attitude will impact the children. If you are happy to give it a go, so will they. Children get silly when we put too many restrictions on them. We have to be there and available and very attentive to danger, particularly for the younger child but children give the regular opportunity can achieve extraordinary things.
See the photos in the book about the Portuguese experiment, These children were 18 months old. And this article about how our own values can close down or allow quality experiences for children.