With so many things vying for the time and attention of kids and families these days, it’s a wonder we have any leisure time at all! With school work, music lessons, team sports and other activities, the importance of creative play is often overlooked, to the detriment of the child.
Remember when you were young and you would simply head out to the playground with a ball and a few hours of free time, with no plan for what you would do when you got there? As children, we would use our boundless imaginations to invent fantastic games with creative and ever-evolving rulesets that required running, climbing, swinging, twisting and jumping. Free play is a developmental milestone that should be encouraged and protected.
Current research has reemphasized the important role of unstructured active play in the physical and mental development of a child. The recommendation from child development experts is that this kind of unstructured physical play should be happening every single day. Toddlers ages one to three should be engaging in 30 minutes of active play daily, while children from ages three up to 11 should have a full hour.
The best kind of active play is vigorous enough to cause a child to breathe a little bit faster and deeper, and their heart begin to beat faster. Parents can notice a rosiness in their child’s cheeks during true active play, and the child may get warm or even begin to sweat.
Kids usually don’t need much help coming up with creative ideas that will get them moving, but if you need some inspiration to send you in the right direction, there are countless ideas online for fun outdoor activities and ideas that can serve as springboards for active play.
ParticipACTION has a mobile website, www.bringbackplay.mobi, that features a growing database of these kinds of ideas which can be sorted according to the ages of participants, the number of players, the equipment at hand and even the available play space. (When it comes to play spaces, try evaluating whether a destination is within walking distance before piling everyone into the car!)
Part of the benefit of increased active play time is a corresponding reduction in screen time! Experts in child development counsel that children under two years old shouldn’t be watching any TV at all, and children ages three to five should stick to only one or two hours of screen time per day, which includes television and computer or mobile devices. Reducing screen time and increasing physical activity will start to create healthy habits and patterns of behavior in children that will serve them well as they get older, and may help them avoid the health risks associated with obesity.
While it is important for both physical and social development for children to engage in active play with their friends, it is also important to remember that children learn best from positive role models. If parents will make time for active play with their children, whole families can become healthier and stronger.
The key to a healthy life is engagement in a variety of sport and physical activity at a young age. The best way to encourage that physical activity is to make it fun, and make it a natural part of your family’s daily life.
This article is provided by Sport Calgary with content from www.activeforlife.ca. For more information about Sport Calgary, visit www.sportcalgary.ca or follow them on Twitter, @SportCalgary.
Calgary’s Child Magazine © 2024 Calgary’s Child
