by SHAPE America

SHAPE America (the Society of Health and Physical Educators) serves as the voice for 200,000+ health and physical education professionals across the United States and recognizes the importance of early childhood education. It suggests these activities to help teach families the importance of physical activity for young children. SHAPE America offers a variety of ideas, strategies, information, and resources for parents to use the space within their homes, the materials they have, and their limited time to model and encourage physical activity.

Here’s an idea for infants (age two months or when the child can lie on their tummy and hold up his/her head): 

The adult lies on his/her back on the floor with the baby lying on top of the adult, facing each other. Place blankets or pillows around the sides of the adult so there is something soft for the baby to touch as the adult rolls from side to side.

As you are lying on your back on the floor, place the infant on your tummy, so that the child is facing you. Begin by holding the child with both of your hands on his/her back. Gently roll your body from side to side. This will cause the child to explore using his/her body to maintain a balanced position, thus contracting many muscles. As the child gains more control, let go little by little, to the point where you are barely holding on to the child as you gently roll from side to side. As the child gets older, you can make this a bit more ‘rough and tumble’ by holding onto the child and increasing your rolling motion from side to side. As you play this game, make the sounds of an airplane engine taking off and banking through the air.

Large motor skills: The child begins to gain voluntary control of arm movements, using arms, legs, and torso to maintain balance. 

Social emotional development: The child displays pleasure in interacting with familiar adults, and engaging in social games through playful, back-and-forth interactions.

It’s important to know that balance requires the use of many different parts of the body at one time. To fully balance, the body must learn to work its different parts together, contracting and relaxing various muscles to achieve the desired posture. As infants lay on their tummies and move their arms and legs, they work very hard, contracting numerous muscles while relaxing others, allowing them to achieve the constantly changing postures while achieving some sense of balance.

Most children can lie on their tummies and hold up their heads to look around by the age of one to four months. Here’s a pre-K activity that teaches families the importance of physical activity for young children. 

Space: outdoors—Stuff: your imagination—Time: playing after school, or weekend fun. Throw a leaf or bunch of leaves up in the air and watch them float through space. Talk about how they move high and low and fast and slow. Some leaves even twist and twirl as they float down toward the ground.

Now it is your turn. Use your imagination to pretend you are a leaf that has just fallen from a tree. Float all over space. Dart high and low, fast and slow, twist and twirl until you reach the ground. Try it again but this time pretend to be a very small leaf or a very large leaf. Help your children grow and learn by providing opportunities for both movement and creativity. Children will improve their thinking and movement skills while getting much-needed physical activity. Extend the activity above by pretending to move like other things you may see in nature — jump like a frog, fly like an eagle, roll like a rock, or flow like a stream. Act out a few examples with your child and then let your child lead the activity with a few ideas.

(SHAPE America provides many free resources for individual, non-commercial use; learn more at <www.shapeamerica.org>.)