Browsing by Author "Hakku, Sara"

There is a lot of discussion about how children do not exercise enough nowadays. Many of them spend a large part of their day in a kindergarten, so the role of the early childhood education enabling adequate physical activity is remarkably great. It was the intention of my survey to find out what kind of physical activity there is in preschool groups, what kind of learning circumstances there appears to be, when viewed from the point of physical exercise, and how the adults are acting as supporters of children’s exercise. The intention was to make comparison between a preschool education group and an exercise oriented preschool education group. The survey was carried out as a qualitative survey in January 2018. The material was collected from two preschool education groups in the metropolitan area. As collecting method of the material I used monitoring the child group and interviewing the kindergarten teachers. The interviews were carried out as theme interviews and they were taped. The material was analyzed based on the material by organizing it under three main themes. The results showed that both groups tried to support the physical exercise of the children. However, the operating methods between the preschool education group and the exercise oriented preschool education group were different. In exercise oriented preschool education group they used different indoor facilities on weekly basis in order to increase activity. In preschool education group they mainly did not work like that because of the lack of the facilities; instead, they used outdoor yard to enable the physical activity. The exercise oriented preschool group spent time on the yard remarkably less, but they used the nearby sports hall and tatami in their activity on weekly basis. They had more facilities in their disposal in the kindergarten, but the exercise instruments were almost the same in both groups. However, during the free activity indoors, the preschool group children used less exercise instruments than the exercise oriented group. Based on the survey good facilities make it easier to carry out physical activity. You cannot always influence on the facilities, but on their use you can. The adult who considers it important to support the physical exercise of the children can influence on it. The survey shows that there is not just one way to support the physical activity of children. Every educator has to realize the needs of the children and consciously act based on that so that we could further promote the wellbeing, development and learning of the children.