The Positive Influence and Suggestion of Activity Curriculum on Children ()
1. Introduction
Young children’s sports exercise situation is not optimistic at the present stage of the world; about 50% of the children don’t do up to 60 minutes of moderate physical activity every day. The world health organization recommends appropriate intensity of physical activity daily; the class time has been the most significant reason, let the children sitting with teachers as the leading course lead to seven to eight hours a day of sedentary time [1]. Physical activity’s physical and mental benefits have prompted the government to require students to do at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity every day. However, time constraints and educational priorities make it difficult for teachers and schools to integrate active lessons into school routines [2].
Physically active Lesson, which combines physical activity with learning, has been identified as an effective way to increase physical activity in schools without compromising educational time [3]. The activity curriculum is to let children in sports activities at the same time learn academic content. Examples of activity lessons include doing star jumps while memorizing multiplication tables [4] to show whether an answer is right or wrong [5]. Learning combined with physical activity can be well integrated into the current children’s learning and enrich teaching activities [6]. These activities can be done indoors or outdoors. In the activity course, the brain is not in a state of “rest” when carrying out sports activities but also thinking. The activity course is a course that effectively combines educational content with sports activities [7].
The positive influence of activity curriculum on children’s development is reflected in its impact on physical activity, education, and health. It is of great significance to carry out an activity curriculum effectively. Therefore, this study summarizes the influence and relationship of activity curriculum on children’s physical activity, education, and health and puts forward relevant suggestions for the implementation of activity curriculum in early childhood education according to the advantages and limitations of the performance of activity curriculum.
2. The Positive Influence of Activity Courses on Children
2.1. The Influence of Activity Courses on Children’s Physical Activity
The activity course promoted the children’s physical activity in the classroom significantly, and the overall physical activity in daily life also increased slightly. A slight increase in overall physical activity corresponded to a significant increase in physical activity in the classroom. This may indicate a potential compensation mechanism in which children play at a lower activity level after the activity lessons to compensate for their consumption of physical activity during the activity lessons [8]. Another explanation is that although activity courses become a way to increase children’s physical activity, the overall proportion of activity courses to children’s curriculum is relatively small, and children have other physical activities outside of class, so it is not enough to lead to a significant increase in overall physical activity. To achieve more excellent physical activity benefits, schools may need to rationalize the activity curriculum and the amount of physical activity in the activity curriculum and develop programs and standards suitable for young children’s physical activity [9]. But there is no denying that activity courses can increase children’s physical activity.
2.2. Influence of Activity Curriculum on Early Childhood Education
The research shows that the activity curriculum positively influences the results of preschool classroom education. In 2017, “Medicine & Science IN Sports & Exercise” (Impact of Three Years of Classroom Physical Activity Bouts on time-on-task Behavior. After three years of follow-up research, it was found that the children who received the activity course participated significantly more in medium and high-intensity sports than those who only received the traditional method. The activity course teaching positively impacted children’s attention [10]. Studies have shown that sitting in class for a long time will lead to children’s distractions in the learning process. Children tend to become agitated after a long time of learning without rest. Arranging activities in the school curriculum can help reduce students’ distracting Behavior. Implementing an activity curriculum does not mean that the standard of learning is lowered, but the effective combination of learning content and physical activities actively promotes children’s education [11]. After some time, children’s attention and learning efficiency will decline. Learning activities can prevent the decline of learning efficiency and keep children in a better learning state. Activity courses that promote learning efficiency can be learned from brain learning theory, which, to some extent, shows that physical activity above moderate intensity positively stimulates the brain. In a short time, physical activity can effectively stimulate the brain to produce chemical reactions, thus improving young children’s attention and cognitive ability [12].
2.3. Impact of Activity Curriculum on Children’s Health
The problem of overweight and obesity in young children is a risk factor affecting health, which can cause a series of diseases such as hypertension, elevated blood lipids, and heart disease. These diseases may continue into adulthood. Lack of physical activity in young children can easily lead to overweight and obesity [13]. Despite this, most of the school time for young children at home and abroad is spent sedentary, lacking moderate or higher intensity of exercise [14]. Also, in the study of normal-weight and overweight children by comparing the influence of activity curriculum, it can be seen that the activity curriculum of overweight children in the classroom has played a good effect on the overweight children’s extracurricular activity is relatively small; therefore, the activity curriculum of physical activity is fairly concentrated to obtain the excellent result; After a period of observation, the BMI of overweight children in particular improved significantly. Therefore, the activity curriculum can be extended to the application of obesity prevention, which brings the dual benefits of enhancing learning habits and improving the health of young children [15]. Studies have also proved that learning activity courses can promote children’s cardiovascular health and reduce the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases in the future. At the same time, activity courses can also improve the ability to combine hemoglobin and oxygen in children’s blood to enhance the brain’s ability to receive new information [16].
2.4. Comparison of Activity Courses and Subject Courses
Activity lessons pay more attention to the combination of “play” and “learning”, which may let children acquire learning knowledge in the fun experience of sports and let children unknowingly accept knowledge. However, the subject curriculum model is relatively fixed, and there are obvious boundaries between different subjects. For example, in today’s PE class, there is no knowledge of other subjects in PE class, which will improve the efficiency of learning to a certain extent, but restrain students’ ability of self-discovery and self-learning. Today’s curriculum in China is mostly a combination of different subject courses, which indirectly forms the exam-oriented education. More and more students study for the sake of learning, without thinking about why they study. And fail to discover the joy of learning.
3. Specific Application of Activity Courses
According to domestic and foreign literature, the specific application of activity courses can be divided into thematic and combined activity courses.
3.1. Thematic Activity Courses
Theme activity curriculum could be launched on a specific topic, such as the subject of basketball activity curriculum, carried out the activity curriculum, and encourage young children in basketball, fully exercise experience, to learn basketball knowledge at the same time. Teachers will basketball knowledge through various methods, to reasonable Design of teaching links, Let children in the process of movement of basketball knowledge study, young children aeriform in love for the sport, such as “basketball obstacle relay”, in the teaching design requirements within the given time children dribble around obstructions, cannot run into obstacles on the way, otherwise will start again, have certain conditions for the infant’s ability to dribble, also cultivate the children’s team consciousness, At the same time to understand the basic knowledge of basketball, improve the comprehensive quality of children. There are also activities with “sowing” as the theme of the course, and the teacher simulated sowing design of sports activities, let children participate in the action to introduce the process of planting food to harvest, cultivate children to cherish the quality of food.
3.2. Combined Activity Courses
Combination of the class activity curriculum is the other course content and the integration of sports activities, such as young children in the study of the English words, professor for the English words, let the students imitate exercises, such as the word “duck” can let students go duck step simulation exercises, which not only increased the classroom physical activity also deepen the memory of the word. In math essential addition and subtraction learning, the teacher lists the operation formula and asks children to jump according to the results, such as writing “1 + 1 =?” After that, the student jumps forward two steps. This also increases children’s physical activity and classroom fun, improving learning.
4. Advantages and Limitations of Implementing an Active Curriculum
4.1. Advantages of Implementing Active Courses
The activity curriculum is easy to be promoted in the early childhood curriculum and easily integrated into other classes. It does not need much adjustment, and the implementation cost of the activity curriculum is low [17]. It is the nature of children to play and play, and the activity courses are in line with the psychological characteristics of children. Children like and easily accept such practices. Value more and more teachers, values change, the influence of exam-oriented education in our country for a long time, to children’s education and ignoring the child literacy class of aeriform in favor of developing other aspects. But more and more parents and teachers have transformed the concept compared with the traditional curriculum. Teachers are also more willing to go to the implementation of activity curriculum and promote the diversification of teaching mode. Parents also pay attention to their children’s physical exercise and significantly expect their children’s physical health. Their support for the activity courses also promotes the implementation of the activity courses. The activity course has many positive effects, and the system has been widely recognized.
4.2. Limitations of Implementing Active Courses
Activity course in how to arrange suitable for young children’s activity and activity is a significant problem, if excessive exercise intensity, exercise too much activity curriculum. Still, negative influence on children, the exercise intensity and exercise is too small to reach a better class effect, therefore to solve this problem, without the help of a school and teacher aspects of cooperation. The content arrangement of activity courses is boring, and the Design of classroom links ignores the limitation of the development of activity courses. Also, in the implementation of the activity curriculum, school infrastructure, and teachers’ low accomplishment level will limit the performance of the activity curriculum. Suppose the activity curriculum is not coordinated with other courses. In that case, it will lead to conflict between the activity curriculum and other courses, limiting the development of the activity curriculum. Not only that, the limitations of activity curriculum is characterized by overly exaggerated the importance of children’s personal experience, ignore the system of subject knowledge learning, easy to cause “utilitarianism” ignore the children’s thinking ability and other mental quality development, tend to produce the effect of individual experience in children’s daily life absolute without consider the logical order of the experience itself, As a result, students can only learn some fragmentary knowledge and reduce the level of systematic knowledge of students.
5. Suggestions on the Implementation of Activity Courses
5.1. Paying Attention to the Interest and Innovation of Activity Courses
It is the nature of children to like games, play, and play, so the Design of activity courses should be in line with this point. The design content should be fun and gamification so that children can learn in happy activities, and the game factors can be infiltrated into the activity courses. Children are generally more interested in ball games, so we can combine the ball games in the activity curriculum to stimulate children’s interest in classroom activities and learning motivation. Activity curriculum includes physical activity and knowledge learning, which requires innovative curriculum content arrangement and ingenious and novel combination of physical activity and knowledge learning. For example, children in the process of outdoor games, can join the elements of math learning; First of all, let the children run around the circle with the teacher as the center, and the teacher shouted the number. Assuming the teacher shouted “5”, the five children need to combine quickly according to the teacher’s instructions, which not only exercises the children’s reaction ability, but also enhances their sensitivity to numbers.
5.2. Adjusting the Content and Intensity of Activity Courses According to the Characteristics of Students
The arrangement of the content and intensity of the activity course needs to be adjusted according to the situation of the students, and the teacher should be able to control the situation of the students accurately. For example, some children have good physical fitness, and the intensity and activity volume of the activity course can be appropriately improved, while some children with poor physical fitness can be appropriately reduced activity intensity and volume. For children, if the amount and intensity of activities are too small, the classroom effect will be poor. Therefore, a teacher needs to understand the situation of students in the class and be able to adapt to the curriculum.
5.3. Improving Teachers’ Professional Quality and Improving School Activity Facilities
Teachers need to learn knowledge related to activity courses, improve teaching methods and their teaching ability, and constantly enrich teaching methods. At the same time, understand each student’s basic situation, care for students, cultivate teachers’ professional ethics quality, and adapt to the change in a teaching situation. Schools should strengthen infrastructure construction and ensure teachers and students have a good teaching environment to create a suitable atmosphere for activities.
5.4. Developing an Activity Curriculum Program and Optimizing Curriculum Structure
Activity curriculum will tend to be stereotyped, and standardization and formulate related to activity curriculum program is essential. The syllabus can carry out teachers in the Teaching to ensure the quality of Teaching. At the same time, optimize the structure of the activity curriculum, which is different from the traditional course teachers in teaching design, which needs the overall arrangement of teaching content. Design the form of the course.
6. Conclusions
Early childhood education plays a vital role in children’s physical and mental development and in cultivating character and habits. It is essential to help children form positive and correct values, shape a sound mind and develop good living habits. Preschool education includes early education enlightenment and the cultivation of children’s social communication ability, practical ability, behavior habits, and other aspects. Hence, the activity curriculum, with strong practicality and openness, is an important part of preschool education. The purpose is to enrich the curriculum activities to achieve the goal of preschool education: To develop children’s skills, inspire children’s thinking, help children improve practical skills, form good behavior habits, and form basic social skills. The curriculum combines physical activity with educational content, which complements and cooperates. Activity curriculum can expand, practice, and extend children’s curriculum and help children improve their practical ability [18].
In the traditional curriculum, children’s attention is often not focused and cannot be maintained for a long time. In joining the game, teachers can actively interact with children to focus their attention and keep their interest in the game for a long time [19]. In the enrichment of children’s teaching content at the same time, for children’s classroom to bring infinite vitality and vitality, to achieve efficient children’s teaching effect, knowledge learning and game activities, to achieve comprehensive and coordinated development of children [20].
The implementation of an activity curriculum has some advantages. Still, it has some limitations, such as the amount of exercise and intensity, the arrangement of activity curriculum content and the location of curriculum structure, the coordination of activity curriculum, and the problems of teachers’ level and school hardware facilities. According to the summary, changing such limitations requires coordination and innovation in many aspects, which will be a hot issue in implementing activity curricula in the future. Formulating a specific program of activity curriculum and establishing a perfect mechanism are essential guarantees for the efficient implementation of activity curriculum. This paper describes the children’s activity curriculum in the form of text, without data support, future research should focus on the comparison of domestic and foreign studies and use the form of systematic review or Meta analysis to explain the impact of activity curriculum on children, and future research should explore the form of activity curriculum more.
Funding
This study was supported by the grant (KYH06Y21383) of early development of infants and children aged 0 - 3 years old in China: A study on the characteristics and evaluation of physical and motor development.