Browsing by Author "Romppanen, Laura"

This research was about to examine how does exercise and physical education affect on small children, and what is teacher´s role in physical education from offical documents’ pers-pective. This research uses the term physical education instead of sports pedagogy. These two terms differ from their significance and are often understood as each other´s synonymes. Physical education views exercise from the view of education, while sports pedagogy is a part of pedagogy. Effect of exercise into childrens growth, development, wellbeing and health has been researched a lot. There are recommendations for early age exercise that are based on researches. These recommendations are part of this researchs´ material. According to the re-commendations exercise is indispensable to small children and their growth and health. Research method was a qualitative content analysis. The main materials were official recom-mendations of exercise, the National Core Curriculum for ECEC 2016 and the National Core Curriculum for Pre-primary Education 2014. Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and Ministry of Education and Culture have published official recommendations for exercise that children are entitled to receive. The material used in this research also contains research articles and books of exercise and physical education written by researchers. This research proves that exercise is very important for childrens growth, development, well-being and health. Sporty lifestyle adopted in early childhood often carries to adulthood and promotes a positive life path. Exercise benefits not only individual himself but also society by low costs of healtcare. Also, exercise influences positively through many significant dimen-sions. It has a wide importance on childrens physical, mental and socioemotional develop-ment. Teacher´s role as an implementer of physical education is highlighted. Skilful teacher understands the diverse meaning of exercise and enables childs spontaneous moving, and also pays attention the different exercise orientations in early chilhood education.