Physical activity — primarily in the form of active play — promotes young children’s physical, mental, emotional and social health. It can also influence how active people will be later in life.
It’s recommended that pre-school children, aged three to four years, engage in at least three hours of physical activity per day, and that should include one hour of high-intensity, heart-pumping movement. Sedentary screen time should also be limited to less than one hour per day.
Despite this, many children in Canada and around the world do not meet recommended levels of physical activity and engage in far more sedentary screen time than recommended.
