The Childcare Environment and Children’s Physical Activity

Bower, Julie K.; Hales, Derek; Tate, Deborah F.; Rubin, Daniela A.; Benjamin, Sara E.; Ward, Dianne S.

doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2007.09.022

Cited by 356 publications

(452 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…In Ireland, the National Association for Sport and Physical Education guidelines have been adopted for use in the child-care setting (80) . It has been reported that the pre-school attended, its quality level and the presence of policy are all determinants of physical activity (81)(82)(83)(84) .…”

Section: Proceedings Of the Nutrition Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Healthy incentive scheme in the Irish full-day-care pre-school setting

Molloy

Kearney²,

Hayes³

et al. 2013

Proc. Nutr. Soc.

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A pre-school offering a full-day-care service provides for children aged 0-5 years for more than 4 h/d. Researchers have called for studies that will provide an understanding of nutrition and physical activity practices in this setting. Obesity prevention in pre-schools, through the development of healthy associations with food and health-related practices, has been advocated. While guidelines for the promotion of best nutrition and health-related practice in the early years' setting exist in a number of jurisdictions, associated regulations have been noted to be poor, with the environment of the child-care facility mainly evaluated for safety. Much cross-sectional research outlines poor nutrition and physical activity practice in this setting. However, there are few published environmental and policy-level interventions targeting the child-care provider with, to our knowledge, no evidence of such interventions in Ireland. The aim of the present paper is to review international guidelines and recommendations relating to health promotion best practice in the pre-school setting: service and resource provision; food service and food availability; and the role and involvement of parents in pre-schools. Intervention programmes and assessment tools available to measure such practice are outlined; and insight is provided into an intervention scheme, formulated from available best practice, that was introduced into the Irish full-daycare pre-school setting.

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Section: Proceedings Of the Nutrition Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Child-care settings have unique physical and social aspects that are not measured adequately by tools designed for the assessment of the school, home or built environment (83) . Pre-school award schemes.…”

Section: Development Of Tools To Assess and Promote Best Practice In mentioning

confidence: 99%

Healthy incentive scheme in the Irish full-day-care pre-school setting

Molloy

Kearney²,

Hayes³

et al. 2013

Proc. Nutr. Soc.

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“…It has been suggested that development of FMS per se should be a key component of early childhood physical education programs (Tremblay et al 2012). It is recommended that children below five years of age are physically active for at least two hours per day, and caregivers minimize the children's However, studies using objective physical activity measurements, such as direct observation or accelerometers, indicate that children in day care spend, in general, more than two-thirds of their waking time in sedentary activities and only approximately ten percent in MVPA (Bower et al 2008;Brown et al 2006;Nicaise, Kahan, and Sallis 2011). Further, many children may not develop mature forms of all major FMS (Okely and Booth 2004;Vandaele et al 2011) and in young children some motor skills show a secular decline (Roth et al 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The correlates of child care children's physical activity and sedentary behaviour have been widely investigated (Bower et al 2008;Hinkley et al 2010;Timmons et al 2012). Motor skills proficiency (Bürgi et al 2011;Fisher et al 2005;Kambas et al 2012) especially locomotor and manipulative skills (Cliff et al 2009;Williams et al 2008), have explained a significant amount of the variance in physical activity levels.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Directly observed physical activity and fundamental motor skills in four-year-old children in day care

Iivonen

Sääkslahti

Mehtälä

et al. 2016

European Early Childhood Education Research Journal

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Physical activity (PA), its location, social interactions and fundamental motor skills were investigated in four-year-old Finnish children in day care. Six skills in the stability, locomotor and manipulative domains were assessed in 53 children (24 boys, 29 girls, normal anthropometry) with the APM-Inventory manual for assessing children's perceptual and fundamental motor skills (Numminen, 1995) and Total Motor Scores (TMS; 0-6 points) calculated. PA intensity, location, group composition and activity type − sitting, squatting, kneeling − were directly observed with a modified version of the Observational System for Recording Physical Activity in Children-Preschool Version (OSRAC-P) (Brown et al. 2006) during three consecutive days in 14 centres.

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“…6 Although there is growing evidence pointing to the influence of both the social and physical environment on children's physical activity level and nutrition, 12,13 there are a limited number of tools that assess the physical activity and nutritional environment in childcare settings and afterschool programs. [13][14][15][16][17] Moreover, of the existing scales that include physical activity and/or nutrition, none is designed to measure the extent to which the afterschool program environment is aligned with existing physical activity and nutrition policies/standards for afterschool programs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%