Meeting a Physical Activity Guideline in Preschool and School Readiness: A Program Evaluation
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Meeting a Physical Activity Guideline in Preschool and School Readiness: A Program Evaluation Betsy Hoza1 · Erin K. Shoulberg1 · Connie L. Tompkins2 · Lori E. Meyer3 · Caroline P. Martin1 · Allison Krasner1 · Marissa Dennis1 · Hannah Cook1 Accepted: 30 August 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This study evaluates if the Kiddie Children and Teachers on the Move physical activity (PA) program improves the proportion of days meeting the Institute of Medicine (IOM) PA guideline, and whether meeting the guideline is correlated with improvement in school readiness. Thirteen Head Start-affiliated pre-kindergarten classrooms participated in this study. Minutes per hour of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and proportion of days meeting the IOM PA guideline were examined across three types of intervention days: days during a non-intervention period, non-program days during the intervention period, and program days during the intervention period. Children displayed increasingly more MVPA and a greater proportion of days meeting the IOM guideline from non-intervention days to non-program days, and from non-program days to program days. Proportion of days meeting the guideline significantly predicted improvement in school readiness in five of six domains. Examination of program fidelity indicated the program was run with high fidelity. Keywords Preschool · Head Start · Physical activity (PA) · Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) · School readiness
Introduction There is consensus among the medical community that adequate physical activity (PA) is critically important to optimizing several aspects of health and development in early childhood [1, 2], yet meeting guidelines for PA at this age remains variable at best [3]. Complicating evaluation of meeting guidelines is the fact that recommendations regarding PA during the early childhood years vary across expert sources. For example, the daily Bright Futures Guidelines [4] endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend 60 or more minutes of structured PA (planned and supervised by an adult), at least 60 additional minutes of * Betsy Hoza [email protected] 1
Department of Psychological Science, University of Vermont, 2 Colchester Avenue, Burlington, VT 05405, USA
2
Department of Rehabilitation and Movement Science, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA
3
Department of Education, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA
unstructured PA, and no more than 60 consecutive minutes of sedentary awake time each day. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) guideline for toddlers and preschoolers, in contrast, is for approximately 15 min per each hour a child is in early care settings, including both structured and unstructured PA [5]. Recent work examining daily percentage of days meeting the IOM 15 min per hour guideline during the school day across 15 early childhood education classrooms suggested that children met this goal slightly less than two-thirds of the time [6]. Crit
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