Physical activity and preschool children with and without developmental delays: A national health challenge

Abstract

Recently the Institute of Medicine (Early childhood obesity prevention policies, Washington, DC, 2011) established a US guideline for preschool children and recommended 15 min or more of total physical activity (i.e., total accumulated light, moderate, and vigorous activity) per hour or 3 h per day assuming 12 h of wake time. Nevertheless, researchers have found that many young children do not meet the proposed guideline in early care and education programs. In spite of the extensive interests in preschoolers’ physical activity and emerging descriptive and intervention investigations, much remains to be learned about young children’s physical activity. Our purpose for this chapter is to selectively review the evidence of what we know about young children’s physical activity and based on that emerging informational base make reasonable recommendations for practitioners who are interested in enhancing preschool children’s salubrious activity in community-based early care and education programs.