Excerpts
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It’s recommended that pre-school children, aged three to four years, engage in at least three hours of physical activity per day, and that should include one hour of high-intensity, heart-pumping movement. Sedentary screen time should also be limited to less than one hour per day.
Despite this, many children in Canada and around the world do not meet recommended levels of physical activity and engage in far more sedentary screen time than recommended.
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There are many barriers to promoting physical activity in child-care settings, including prioritization of academic outcomes and limited space or equipment.
For ECEs, the lack of formal training on the integral role of physical activity on children’s learning, health and development may present a key barrier.
Only 32 per cent of students in early childhood education programs in Canada have taken a course related to physical activity in their post-secondary degree.
Furthermore, ECEs across Canada have reported a lack of knowledge and confidence in their ability to incorporate physical activity opportunities into daily programming in child-care settings. This is the case even while ECEs have expressed interest in pursuing more training on these important subjects.