The innovative practice of shifting furniture at Maghull’s It’s the Little Things comes amid new government guidelines encouraging physical activity from birth and giving pre-school children up to an hour’s extra exercise a day.
The day nursery is piloting a Sefton NHS-backed training scheme, run by Merseyside Sports Partnership (MSP) which aims to meet the government guidelines by building in simple tasks to normal nursery life.
And at It’s the Little Things, this includes removing chairs to ensure its children aged from four months to one year-old naturally stretch, burn calories and flex their muscles. Manager Sue Carr said: “We have moved the wooden chairs in the baby room away from the table. It allows them to be more active as the babies have to push themselves up, using a lot of energy, and balancing to stand at the table when they are doing a lot of messy play and jigsaws. It’s something we do anyway, but with the training realised just how important it was.”
The “short bursts” of physical activity at the nursery include using its 42 acres of woodland, with children tasked with finding bean bags hurled into the woods before running back to staff.
The nursery has been asked to measure the progress by Merseyside Sports Partnership, which includes detailed diary entries and monitoring things such as heart rate and general “huff and puff” connected to exercise.
Kerry Stewart, MSP’s business and performance manager, said there was a “a massive gap” in terms of physical activity provision for children from birth to five.
And the pilot would now be rolled across Merseyside from September allowing those who sign up to receive “active nursery” accreditation.
She said: “In order to be physically active, you need to see that the children are out of breath, warm, signs of physical exercise. We are not expecting the child to do an extra 60 minutes in one go, it can be in short bursts.”
She added: “We are not dictating to nurseries but giving them advice. It is how they want to be creative and how they can make what they do physical.”
No comments:
Post a Comment