Active Play

Hankel and Roary, The Dino Duo, are on a mission.

These two friendly dinosaurs want to help preschool children to move.

Children love to move.  They love to explore the world around them.  It is through movement and active play that they learn. They learn about shapes and textures, they learn about distance and weight. They learn about the effects of gravity when they move.   When your child is moving your child is having fun. Active Play is shown to have many benefits.

  • Build strong bones and muscles and develop a healthy heart and lungs
  • Teach children how their body works
  • Help in the development of fine motor skills (activities using the hands) like drawing, writing, and buttoning
  • Develop eye-hand coordination which is important in sports skill development but is also important in maths and reading skills

These are just a few of the many benefits active play provides for your child.

 

Dinoduo want you to MOVE

Model active play and active transport

Opportunities: provide lots of opportunities for active play

Vocabulary: provide your child with the language skills to support movement

Encourage and Enjoy: make movement fun

 

How Much Active Play?

How much active play should a preschooler get? The Dinoduo have done the research and you might be surprised at the result. A preschool child requires 180 minutes of active play a day. That seems like a lot and may be a little daunting. The trick is to encourage your child to move a little and move often.  Add a little movement throughout the day and it all adds up.

Once your child is able to walk independently, the research says they need to be doing physical activity for at least 3 hours (180 minutes) per day.  Dinoduo wants to help you and your child fit 3 hours of active play into what is already a very busy day.  The research recommends that one hour of this active play should be of structured activities.

The active play can be broken down into 10 to 15-minute slots throughout the day.  The active play can be structured or unstructured.

Follow Dinoduo and these two friendly dinosaurs will show you lots of fun games and ideas to include active play into your pre-schoolers day and help your child develop their movement skills.

Copyright Dinoduo 2018