Product Description

Fundamental movement skills are the building blocks of all movement. Children who are physically active from an early age and receive positive, enjoyable and successful movement experiences in the early stages of life will continue to engage in and pursue activity on a regular basis throughout their life.
Kids With Zip focuses on the best movement experiences for 3 to 12 year olds and provides over 600 ideas for stimulating indoor, outdoor, individual and group activities. Fully illustrated and using simple action figures, Kids With Zip provides a wealth of background information and practical advice for educators and parents, including:

• Nutritional facts

• Fitness facts

• Strategies for encouraging the reluctant child

• Considerations for children with special needs

• Safety pointers

• Homemade equipment

• Locating equipment

• Motor coordination principles

• Characteristics of 3 to 12 year olds

Kids With Zip is an easily accessible and useful resource for everyone who is involved with young children including teachers, day-care and after-school educators, recreational instructors and parents.

About this book

The purpose of this book is manyfold: to provide quality movement experiences for young children (from ages 3-12) that enhance listening skills, reaction and alertness; to develop spatial and body awareness, motor memory, and overall body management and coordination; to develop fitness, both health- and skill-related; to foster cooperation, fair play and social interaction at the developmentally appropriate age level; and to foster a healthy happy ‘habit’ and ‘attitude’ in young children which will carry over into active teenagers and active adults. The idea is to literally ‘hook’ young children into wanting to be active at as early an age as possible! Early intervention is the key to prevention in a ‘child-centred’ approach to health and fitness.

Kids with Zip aims to reach anyone and everyone who is involved with young children: early childhood educators teaching young children in pre-primary school programs; parents who are keen to develop well-rounded, fit children; recreational instructors and sports club coaches training young children; day-care educational carers looking after children in out-of-school care programs; primary generalist teachers and physical education specialists in lower and middle primary schools.

How to use this book

Kids with Zip is divided into two parts. The first part provides the user with pertinent information, concisely presented, about the characteristics of young children between the ages of 3-12 essential understandings and principles of sound quality fitness, good nutrition and motor coordination; and how to use this knowledge to provide effective practical ideas for reaching young children and instilling a wish to be active. The authors have also included a section on addressing children with special needs, such as asthma, sensory, impairment and physical or intellectual disabilities.

Part 2 is written for the purpose of providing a plethora of ‘hands-on’ ideas for developing and fostering physically active children. The 50 Kids with Zip Sessions contain over 600 practical and valuable child-centred ideas that can be implemented immediately into any existing program. Children will be more likely to develop positive fitness attitudes and habits if they are involved in enjoyable, developmentally appropriate movement experiences; the overriding factor being that the child’s experience be an enjoyable one, with praise and encouragement providing the essential feedback.

The 50 Kids with Zip Sessions provide fitness ideas for indoor and outdoor play, confined space play, seasonal activities and special events, such as birthday parties, sports club get-togethers and playgroup functions. ‘Active’ ideas are provided for the individual child, partner play, small group and large group play where appropriate, and are progressively presented to accommodate a range of 3-12 years.

Throughout the book relevant ‘Fit Tips’ occur which can be used as discussion points at the developmentally appropriate age level. Also, several suggestions for innovative and manipulative equipment are presented, including ideas for making some of this equipment. Kids with Zip is fully illustrated using simple ‘action figures’ which show the desirable movement and assist in the explanation of the activity or game.

Safety pointers are included as needed with each of the activities.

Overview of Kids with Zip Sessions

Sessions 1-6 provide many activities for developing the basic skills needed for spatial and body awareness, enhancing and improving motor memory, balance and coordination; signals for developing and enhancing listening skills, alertness and reaction responses; and body management exercises that develop stopping and starting responses, falling and recovery, and postural activities.

Sessions 7-31 provide 25 Fit Session ideas that develop and foster the health- and skill-related components of fitness, with particular emphasis on aerobic ability, strength through weight-bearing activities and flexibility.

Sessions 32-34 provide activities for outdoor play and seasonal conditions, such as winter activities of ice-skating and tobogganing, and water activities.

Sessions 35-36 focus on activities that can be ‘ done on rainy days or in limited space and provide ideas for integration of other concepts, such as maths and reading.

Active Session 37 includes ideas and activities that build on colour/number recognition and association, maths concepts, road safety and Australian geography.

Sessions 38-41 include many tag-type and low organised games that can be played with partners and small or large groups of children.

From this follow Sessions 42-43 providing more ideas for functions, such as birthday parties.

Session 44 provides combative play activities that further build on the skill-related fitness components of agility, strength, balance, coordination, speed, reaction time and, to a certain extent, power.

Sessions 45-47 provide many ideas for getting children to move to music, including using musical instruments which can be commercially purchased or home-made.

Session 48 provides indoor and outdoor fitness circuit ideas in which the children rotate through a series of activities that focus on aerobic activity by using a variety of locomotion movements, overall body strength, balance and coordination, and agility in an enjoyable and cooperative effort.

Finally, Sessions 49-50 provide quiet-time activities fostering concentration ability, cooperation, body management, body awareness and more flexibility.

To the parents

The content of this book will provide you, as parents, with a variety of quality movement experiences that you and your child(ren) can do together. Acquiring competence and confidence in movement will enhance children’s overall coordination and nurture their self-esteem. Equally as important, children will build up their fitness to develop good aerobic capacity, strength, flexibility, speed, agility, alertness and reaction.

From an early age awareness, both in personal and general space, body awareness (body image), and to learn to move with effort and in relationship with others. Children need to learn to move but, at the same time, they need to move to learn. Fundamental movement skills are the building blocks of all movement. They are the foundation for skills that your child will use later in life to pursue recreational or competitive sporting activities. They include the locomotion movements of walking, running, dodging, Jumping and landing, leaping, hopping, skipping, sliding, balancing, starting and stopping, and the non-locomotion movements of climbing, hanging, swinging, pushing, pulling and rotating. Fundamental motor skills (object control skills) of rolling, throwing and catching, kicking and striking can then be developed.

The established fact is that children, who are physically active from an early age and receive positive, enjoyable and successful movement experiences in this early stage of their life, will continue to engage in and pursue physical activity on a regular basis as adults throughout their lifetime. The benefits in terms of well being are physiological, psychological (emotional stability), social, vocational and academic.

This book targets the 3-12-year-old child and focuses on the best movement experiences that you can have with children. You will enjoy being actively involved too and can benefit from quality time well-invested in the children’s welfare. These activities have been progressively organised with indoor and outdoor suggestions, including limited space or rainy day activities, seasonal activities, tagging-type activities, large group and party group activities, integrated activities, concentration and combative type activities, rhythm and dance activities, balancing and body management, motor memory activities, and spatial and body awareness activities, plus 25 different Fit Sessions. Enjoy!