Browsing by Author "Määttänen, Annika"

This bachelor’s thesis handles children’s physical education in kindergarten. It tells also about different ways to increase physical activity in kindergarten. The thesis focuses also on the attitudes of early childhood education teachers towards the physical education of children and increases in physical education amounts in kindergarten. It has been found in LAPS- and LATE -researches that most children don’t exercise enough in comparison to the current recommendations and that only few children exercise more than the current recommendations. Previous researches have shown that children are physically more active during the weekends than during weekdays, which is when they attend kindergarten. This thesis aims to find out which factors affect the amount of physical activity in kindergarten and what methods does the early childhood educator have to affect the amount of physical activity in kindergarten. The thesis has been done with the use of a qualitative research method. The material of the research has been collected by interviewing three early childhood education teachers from two different kindergartens. The interviews were held as theme interviews. The material was analysed with content analysis method. The interviews were recorded and written into a transcript. Afterwards they were summarised and the unnecessary parts for the thesis were removed. The remaining content was sorted based on different themes. Research showed that the interviewed teachers had a good attitude towards children’s physical activity. The kindergartens that participated in the research had been enabling children’s physical activity by having different kind of equipment, by allowing the children to use the equipment, by guided physical activity and by the inside and outside environment. Physical exercise was planned and modified based on the participating children and group. All the interviewed teachers had aimed to increase children’s physical activity, for example in commutes and waiting periods. The thesis tells what kind of kindergarten environment pushes children to move and what kind of methods increase guided or self-done physical activity in kindergarten.