Browsing by Author "Halmela, Petteri"

Children's physical activity has a very important role for their safe growth, development and learning overall. According to Finland's national early childhood recommendation children need two daily hours of vigorous physical activity to achieve all positive effects of physical activity. However latest research in this area shows that children are inactive most of the time in day care and none of the children achieve the daily two hours of vigorous physical activity. According to the latest research outdoor activities are the most important factor for children's physical activity. In addition boys are more physically active than girls. The purpose of this study was to find out the amount of children's vigorous physical activity in day care and find the factors which affect on children's vigorous physical activity in day care. There were two research problems: (1) What factors increase children's vigorous physical activity in day care. (2) In what situations are there differences in vigorous physical activity between boys and girls. The method of this research was quantitative. The data used in this study was a part of Jyrki Reunamo's Orientation project (2010). The data of physical activity of this study (n = 19576) was observed in day care centers (n = 18335) and at childminder's (n = 1241). Physical activity was classified in three categories in this study: moderate, moderate to vigorous and vigorous. There were 1890 observations of children's vigorous physical activity in this study. 1134 (60 %) of them were observed for boys and 756 (40 %) were observed for girls. Children in this study were 1 to 7 years old. The data was analyzed using cross tabulation and the chi-square test. Children were mostly moderately physically active in day care (56,1 %). They achieved vigorous physical activity 10 % of the time. The factors that increased children's vigorous physical activity were for example: playing outdoors, higher age and children's own activity. Boys were more vigorously physically active than girls. The amount of vigorous physical activity was 11,6 % on boys and 8,3 % on girls. If the intensity of vigorous physical activity was the same through the whole day, boys were vigorously physically active a little less than an hour during a day in day care. Girls were vigorously physically active about 40 minutes during a day in day care. According to these findings children need more than an hour of vigorous physical activity after a day in day care to achieve the national recommendations.