Movement Games in Kindergarten: 40 Ideas That Really Work

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There is a moment every Kindergarten class knows. It has been raining since morning, the Znüni has been eaten, and the air in the room has somehow become too small. Two children are arguing over the same chair. A third slides off the table without anyone being able to say quite why. And the adult in the room can feel it: what is missing now is not a quieter activity. What is missing is movement.

Movement games in Kindergarten are often seen as what you do when nothing else works any more – a release valve, a filler, something to bridge the gap until lunch. That is understandable, and it is a misunderstanding. Because in what looks like mere charging about, more is happening developmentally than in almost any other activity of the day. A child balancing along a bench is not only training their balance. They are inhibiting impulses, planning sequences of action, processing spatial relationships and, in passing, regulating their own arousal.

This guide collects what works in practice: some forty movement games, sorted by situation, age and room size – for Kindergarten as much as for the nursery and for home. Above all, though, it sets out what matters when choosing, because not every popular game delivers what it promises. We draw on Lehrplan 21, the movement recommendations of the hepa.ch network, the WHO guidelines for children under five, and observations from twenty-five years of daily life with children between six months and six years old.

What Are Movement Games in Kindergarten?

Movement games in Kindergarten are guided or freely chosen games that combine children's natural urge to move with a play idea. They develop motor skills, language, concentration and social behaviour all at once – without children experiencing them as exercises.

The term is used for very different things in everyday practice, and the differences matter. Free play in the outdoor area, a guided movement story in the circle and a movement lesson in the gym do not produce the same effects – and they need different amounts of preparation, space and supervision.

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For everyday practice this means a class or group does not need the one right format but a mixture. Guided play only deprives children of the experience of developing movement ideas of their own. Free play only loses sight of the quieter children, because they rarely take themselves into movement unprompted.

Why Movement Games Are More Than Letting Off Steam

Movement games work far beyond motor skills: they train executive functions such as impulse control and working memory, anchor language through action, regulate emotions and create situations of social negotiation that simply do not arise while sitting down.

The most widespread error of thinking about movement runs: movement is good for the body, learning happens at the table. Three decades of developmental research have thoroughly dissolved that separation. In a young child, perception, motor skills and thinking do not develop alongside one another but with one another – a connection discussed in cognitive science under the heading of embodiment, and one that simply means that concepts need a bodily experience first.

A child does not understand “above” from an explanation. They understand “above” after climbing on top of something a hundred times.

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The connection between movement and executive functions is particularly revealing – that bundle of impulse control, working memory and cognitive flexibility which predicts school readiness more strongly than early letter knowledge does. Review studies show a nuanced picture here: not every form of movement has the same effect. The strongest link to cognitive performance is shown by activities that are coordinatively demanding – games, in other words, in which children have to think and move at the same time.

That has a very practical consequence. Ten minutes of running in a circle is good for the heart and circulation. Ten minutes of running in a circle in which one signal reverses the direction and a second freezes everyone on the spot is, in addition, training for exactly the abilities a child needs in their first year at school.

How Much Movement Does a Kindergarten Child Really Need?

Children of Kindergarten age should move for at least three hours a day, around one hour of that at moderate to vigorous intensity. What matters is the spread across the day – not a single concentrated movement lesson in the morning.

The figure looks high at first glance. In practice a child reaches it surprisingly incidentally, provided the shape of the day allows it: walking to Kindergarten, twenty minutes outdoors in the morning, a movement game before the Znüni, free play in the afternoon, the walk home. The three hours come out of structure, not out of a programme.

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For Kindergarten there is a legal requirement on top of this that is unknown to many parents: the Sports Promotion Ordinance requires that in compulsory Kindergarten, movement and sport be integrated into daily teaching. Only from primary level does the familiar requirement of at least three sport lessons a week apply. For the Kindergarten stage, then, the legislator deliberately opted not for lessons but for everyday practice – which means that, for once, educational research and the law say the same thing.

More interesting than the target figures is the question of where the time goes missing. In our experience, at three points: in long transitions with waiting, in games with a high proportion of explanation and a low proportion of movement, and in weather conditions that rule out the outdoor area without an indoor substitute being planned.

What Makes a Good Movement Game: Six Quality Criteria

Good movement games in Kindergarten keep all children moving at the same time, manage with few rules, can be adjusted in difficulty, put nobody out, need hardly any special equipment and work with twenty children too.

These six criteria sound self-evident and nonetheless rule out a considerable part of the classic game collections. The fourth one above all.

1. A High Proportion of Movement Time per Child

The decisive measure of a movement game is not its total length but the share of that time an individual child actually spends moving. In a classic relay with two lines of ten children, each child moves for about a tenth of the time and waits for nine tenths. The rest is watching – and for many children, frustration.

2. Few Rules, Quickly Explained

A movement game whose explanation takes longer than three minutes loses the class before it has begun. The reverse route is better: start with a minimal rule and only raise the complexity once everyone is in.

3. Adjustable Difficulty

A Kindergarten class spans two year groups, and between the most and least confident child on their feet there are often several years of development. Good games therefore have a built-in range: a bench you can cross, crawl over or walk around. A target that is near or far.

4. Nobody Is Put Out

The classic knock-out principle – musical chairs, traditional dodgeball, musical statues with elimination – has an unfortunate property: it removes from the game precisely the children who would need the most practice, and then leaves them watching. Almost every one of these games can be rescued with a small change of rule.

5. Little or No Special Equipment

The best movement games in Kindergarten work with what is there anyway: newspapers, chairs, blankets, clothes pegs, paper balls, chalk, ropes.

6. Scalable to the Real Group Size

A game that runs beautifully with eight children in a nursery group can turn into chaos with twenty-two Kindergarten children – and the other way round. A note on group size therefore belongs with every description of a game.

40 Movement Games in Kindergarten – Sorted by Situation

The games below are ordered by the question that comes up first in daily practice: where are we, how much space do we have, and what is the game meant to achieve? All the games suit children between three and six, that is both Kindergarten years as well as the older nursery groups, unless noted otherwise.

Movement Games for Indoors and Small Rooms

Indoors, games with a clear structure and small space requirements work best: movement stories, musical statues with a task, newspaper islands, “the floor is lava” and crawling courses. What is decisive is not the size of the room but that all children are active at the same time.

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Circle Games: Movement Games for the Sitting Circle

Circle games combine movement with structure and suit transitions particularly well. They need no extra space, make waiting time productive and give less confident children the security of a fixed position in the circle.

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Movement Games Without Any Equipment

Movement games without equipment work anywhere: in a waiting area, in the woods, on an outing. They need nothing but a voice and attention, which makes them particularly suited to spontaneous situations where tension builds.

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Movement Games for Outdoors and the Woods

Outdoors, occasions for movement arise that cannot be created indoors: uneven ground, slopes, natural materials and changing conditions. Forest days train balance and risk assessment particularly effectively, because the ground is never the same twice.

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Calm Movement Games for Winding Down

After intense phases children need a bridge back to calm. Quiet movement games bring arousal down step by step instead of stopping it abruptly – and so head off the conflicts that typically arise right after boisterous play.

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Movement Games That Build Language

Language and movement pair up outstandingly well: a child who crawls “under the table” while hearing the words anchors the preposition twice over. Movement songs, instructions and movement stories are among the most effective formats in early language development.

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Movement Games by Age: From the Crèche to Starting School

Up to about three, children mainly need opportunity and time; from three, simple play ideas; from four, first games with rules; and from five, complex rules with roles. Guided movement games only really begin to make sense from the age of three.

A child starting Kindergarten at four brings four years of movement history with them. Whether they climb onto the frame or stand beside it is rarely decided in Kindergarten – it is decided in the years before, in which they either had plenty of opportunity to try things out or very little. It is therefore worth looking at the whole span, even though Kindergarten is the actual subject here.

Crèche and Toddler Group: Enabling Rather Than Instructing

In the first three years movement needs no play idea. It needs space, time and restraint from the adults. An infant lying on a firm surface who is not placed in positions they cannot get into themselves will go through the entire course of motor development, from rolling over via commando crawling to standing unaided, entirely under their own steam. At this stage the most effective pedagogical act is often: do not intervene.

That sounds passive and it is not. It means shaping the environment so that movement is possible at all times – free floor space rather than bouncers and seats, different surfaces, something to pull up on, a low step, a ramp. It also means using everyday situations as occasions for movement rather than as transport operations: a child who crawls to the changing mat themselves and climbs up themselves moves more than one who is carried – and it takes only marginally longer.

What is added by way of “games” at this stage are interaction rituals: peekaboo, finger rhymes, disappearing under a cloth, dropping something and having it picked up. They look like keeping a child occupied and are in truth the precursor of every later rule of play – because they consist of turn-taking, anticipation and repetition, which is to say exactly the three elements that make up a game with rules.

From Three: From Imitation to Rules

At around three the picture shifts. Children now understand a condition – “when the music stops, you stand still” – and take pleasure in keeping to it. That is where the time of guided movement games begins. Development from there to starting school proceeds in strikingly clear steps, and each step brings a typical pitfall of its own.

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A note on practice: the ages describe averages, not expectations. Between two children of the same age there is often a year and a half in motor terms, and that is normal. A Kindergarten class also spans two year groups – entry depends on the cantonal cut-off date. This is why the principle of the open task proves itself: the same movement landscape, but every child finds their own way through it. That saves sorting children by ability and preserves the shared pleasure in playing.

One further advantage of mixed ages is often overlooked: the older ones show the younger ones how it is done, and learn more in the process than if they simply knew how themselves. Anyone explaining or demonstrating a movement has to become conscious of it first – a four-year-old who shows a three-year-old the hood trick has understood it better afterwards than before.

And finally: the transitions between stages are the delicate moments. A child moving from nursery to Kindergarten comes from a small group with familiar key persons into a markedly larger class. In motor terms nothing changes in those weeks – but confidence does. If you notice during this phase that a child suddenly stops climbing, do not look at their motor skills but at how secure they feel in the new surroundings.

Building Movement Games into the Day

Movement works most reliably when it is attached to existing fixed points rather than planned as an extra programme. Three short units of five minutes each per day change a class more than one weekly gym lesson does.

The most common reason good intentions fail is not lack of conviction but lack of room in the timetable. New routines only survive in the slipstream of old ones. Because Kindergarten and nursery differ considerably in the shape of their day – half-days with a timetable as against all-day care with a rest period – here are both variants separately.

In Kindergarten: The Teaching Morning

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In the Nursery: The All-Day Rhythm

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Equipment: What You Actually Need

Everyday materials are enough for movement games in Kindergarten. Newspapers, clothes pegs, blankets, ropes and cardboard boxes cover the greater part of all play ideas – and are often more valuable educationally than ready-made gym apparatus, because they are open to interpretation.

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Safety and Risk Competence

Safety in movement games does not mean ruling out risk but removing hazards and allowing calculable risks. Children learn to judge risk solely by being allowed to experience it – in surroundings that cushion the worst case.

The difference between a hazard and a risk is decisive in everyday practice. A hazard is something a child cannot recognise: a loose floor panel, a cord on a jacket while climbing, too narrow a gap between two pieces of apparatus. Hazards are removed. A risk is something a child can judge: a height that feels too high, a branch that wobbles. Risks stay – because they are the thing being learned.

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Three Cases from Practice

The examples below are composite observations from everyday professional practice. They are here because they show something that collections of games rarely convey: that the effect usually does not depend on the game but on a small change around it.

Case 1: Nino, aged 5 – the child who never joined in

A composite example from practice.

Nino is unsure on his feet and knows it. During movement games in Kindergarten he stands reliably at the edge, usually with a plausible reason: tummy ache, thirst, a shoe that pinches. The team spent a long time trying to motivate him, with the usual result – the more attention fell on his not joining in, the firmer the position became.

The change was unspectacular: Nino was given a role with movement in it but no judgement attached. He became the signal-giver for musical statues. He decided when the music stopped, and to do so he had to move to the equipment and back. In the third week he asked whether he might dance too, if another child did the music.

What worked was not the motivation but the order: first a position in which he was competent, then the movement. Not the other way round.

Case 2: A week of rain – when everything indoors escalated

A composite example from practice.

Five rainy days in a row. The class grew louder from day to day, conflicts piled up, and the team responded the way one intuitively responds: with more structure, more circle time, more quiet activities. It got worse.

On the fourth day the principle was reversed. Three fixed movement windows per morning, eight minutes each, indoors, with newspapers and cardboard boxes – attached to the morning circle, the Znüni and the closing sequence. The rest of the programme stayed unchanged.

The number of conflicts halved within two days. The explanation is banal and is nonetheless regularly overlooked: a child who cannot discharge tension through their body discharges it through their relationships. The row over the green spade is often not a row about the green spade.

Case 3: Mira, aged 4 – when a game is too difficult

A composite example from practice.

The class is playing “fire, water, storm”. The children in their second Kindergarten year are delighted. Mira, who has just started, runs the wrong way every time, gets laughed at and leaves the game after two rounds. The obvious diagnosis would be: still too young for the class.

Instead the team worked out that three commands were two too many for her. In the next round there were only “fire” and “water”, but coming faster one after the other. Mira played for twelve minutes. The third command was added a week later, and this time she stayed with it.

The point: a child who drops out of a movement game is rarely overwhelmed by the game. They are overwhelmed by a rule. Leave out the right rule and you bring the child back without changing the game. In mixed-age classes this is the most common and the cheapest adjustment there is.

The Most Common Mistakes in Movement Games

The most common mistakes are: explaining for too long, building in long waits, letting children go out, constantly offering new games, stopping too late, and using movement as a reward or a sanction. All six cost movement time without delivering anything in return.

What is striking is what is not on this list: the choice of game. When a movement game in Kindergarten does not work, it is almost never the game. It is the delivery – and usually one of the following six habits, all of which are well meant and therefore stubbornly persistent.

1. Explaining Everything Before You Start

The reflex is understandable: only once everyone knows the rules can the game run cleanly. In practice the opposite happens. Children of Kindergarten age hold on to an abstract description of rules for two or three sentences at most. After that, exactly what the explanation was meant to prevent begins: interruptions, fidgeting, the first scuffles. And because attention has been used up, you end up having to explain again after the start anyway.

The reverse order works better. Say the essentials in three sentences, show it rather than describe it, and start. Everything else follows during the game, when the situation calls for it. “You run to the wall and back” is enough for the first round. That you have to touch the wall you clarify with the first child who forgets – and then everyone understands, because they can see it.

A second point concerns where you stand while explaining. Standing in front of a seated group and talking produces a lesson. Standing in the circle and doing the first movement yourself produces a game. With four-year-olds the difference is enormous.

2. Building In Waiting Time Without Noticing

Waiting time is the biggest invisible cost in movement games. Nobody notices it, because the class looks busy – some are running, the rest are watching, it all seems orderly. Do the arithmetic and the picture shifts.

The simplest countermeasure is: more lines, shorter distances. Four groups of five halve the waiting time compared with two groups of ten, without anything else changing at all. The second measure is simpler still: give the children who are waiting a movement task. Whoever is in the line hops on the spot; whoever has just cheered does five star jumps. Waiting time becomes incidental movement.

3. Letting Children Go Out

This mistake is the best known and is nonetheless made most often, because practically all the classic games are built that way. What matters is less the principle than the question of what happens to the child who is out. A child sitting at the edge after forty seconds and watching the others for ten minutes learns something in those ten minutes – just not what you intended to convey.

Almost every knock-out game can be repaired with one of three patterns. First, rescue: whoever goes out stays in the game and can be freed by others – that is how Stuck in the Mud works. Second, a change of role: whoever goes out becomes the catcher, the referee or the person in charge of the music. Third, reducing the equipment instead of the children: in musical chairs the chairs disappear, not the children.

All three patterns incidentally preserve the social core of the game. A child who can be freed experiences helpfulness. A child who becomes the catcher experiences a change of role. A child sitting at the edge experiences only that they were the first.

4. Offering a New Game Every Day

The pressure to keep producing something new rarely comes from the children. It comes from the worry of otherwise offering too little. For motor development it is counterproductive, because learning to move works through repetition. On average a child needs four to six goes before it has seen through the structure of a game far enough to concentrate on the movement rather than the rule. Change the game after two goes and you keep every child permanently in the phase in which they move least.

There is also an effect that only shows after a few weeks: a game a class really knows, it can start by itself. Familiar games migrate into break times, into the free afternoon, onto the playground – and produce movement time there that nobody has to lead any more. New games never do that.

What proves itself in practice is a narrow but securely held repertoire: five to eight games per term, plus variations. Vary rather than replace is the rule. The same chasing game with connected playing areas, with two catchers, backwards, in slow motion – that is four new games for the children and not a single one for you.

5. Stopping Too Late

Almost every movement game has a point at which it tips. Before it, it is a good game; after it, it is a source of conflict – and because the shift is gradual, it is regularly missed. The annoyance produced by the last three minutes then writes over the impression of the preceding twelve.

6. Using Movement as a Reward or a Sanction

“Whoever is quiet now may go outside later” and “If you carry on like this, there'll be no gym” come readily to hand in daily life because they work in the short term. But they do two things. First, they take movement away from precisely the children who need it most – sitting still is almost always hard for the same children. Second, they convey a classification that lasts a long time: movement is an extra, not a basic need.

The same logic applies to movement as a punishment – running laps, press-ups, “ten times round the yard”. If you want to link things, link them the other way: movement as a self-evident part of the day that happens regardless of how the morning has gone. On difficult days above all.

Overview: What Works and What Does Not

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The point about joining in deserves a remark of its own, because it is the easiest on the whole list to act on. Adults who join in change participation noticeably – above all among reticent children. The reason is less the role modelling than the distribution of attention: whoever is playing is not watching. And a child who is not being watched dares more.

There is a second, less obvious effect. An adult who runs, stumbles, gets out of breath and laughs about it delivers a lesson in how to treat mistakes along the way – the same one you want to convey at the painting table or while doing up shoes. Children draw their conclusions about how bad clumsiness is not from what we say, but from how we handle our own.

If you want to take one single thing from this chapter, let it be this: almost all six mistakes cost you nothing to fix. Explaining more briefly is no more work than explaining at length. Setting up four lines takes as long as setting up two. Repeating a game is easier than looking for a new one every day. The return is nonetheless considerable – usually a multiple of the actual movement time per child.

How to Spot a Movement-Friendly Kindergarten or Nursery

You can recognise a movement-friendly setting by freely accessible movement materials, daily outdoor time in all weathers, short periods of sitting, things to climb and balance on, and by movement being anchored in the concept rather than merely in the weekly plan.

The Swiss Orientation Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care names movement explicitly as an area of learning, and Lehrplan 21 lists “Movement and Sport” as a subject area of its own from the beginning of the first cycle. In practice, settings differ considerably in how seriously they take that. A visit on site tells you more than any brochure, provided you know what to look at.

It is also revealing whether movement is documented as an area in its own right. A setting that systematically observes every child's motor development can support them purposefully – and notices hesitancy before it turns into avoidance. At Little Star Day School, for instance, music and movement, gymnastics, swimming, yoga and regular forest days are a fixed part of the weekly rhythm in both the nursery and the all-day Kindergarten, and the observations feed into every child's personal development portfolio. Instruments like this are not an end in themselves: they make visible where a child currently stands – and it is precisely that visibility which decides whether they are offered the next step or go unnoticed in the class.

Movement Games for Home

At home the same principles apply as in Kindergarten, only on a smaller scale: short units, little equipment, a clear link to existing routines. Five minutes before supper works more reliably than the outing planned for Sunday.

Parents often ask for indoor ideas, and the most honest answer is: you need fewer ideas than opportunities. The three most effective measures in family life cost nothing.

First: cover journeys on foot, even when it takes longer. The walk to Kindergarten is the most reliable movement time of the day because it happens anyway – and it is at the same time a training ground for independence. Second: a corner of the living space where movement is allowed – a mattress, a pile of cushions, a rope on the floor. Third: pair everyday tasks with movement. Taking the laundry to the basket while hopping takes exactly as long and feels quite different.

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Frequently Asked Questions about Movement Games in Kindergarten

What are the best movement games in Kindergarten?

The most reliable are games with simple rules and high participation: musical statues with a task, Grandmother's Footsteps, Stuck in the Mud, newspaper islands and movement stories. They need hardly any equipment and keep all the children moving at the same time.

Which movement games are suitable for indoors?

Indoors, games without running routes work well: crawling courses, “the floor is lava”, balloon volleyball, movement dice and mirror image. Replace speed with changes of height – hopping and standing up produce the same intensity in a small space.

How long should a movement game last?

Five to fifteen minutes is ideal for Kindergarten children. What matters is stopping while the enjoyment is still there. A game that runs two minutes too long regularly ends in argument rather than satisfaction.

How much movement does a Kindergarten child need per day?

At least three hours a day, around one hour of that at moderate to vigorous intensity. That time should be spread across the whole day. Avoiding long uninterrupted periods of sitting matters just as much.

How much sport is required in Swiss Kindergarten?

In compulsory Kindergarten, movement and sport must be integrated into daily teaching under the Sports Promotion Ordinance. The fixed requirement of three sport lessons a week only applies from primary level.

Which movement games work without any equipment?

Grandmother's Footsteps, Simon Says, Stuck in the Mud, shadow tag, animal parade, colour dash and number groups need no equipment at all. They are particularly suited to spontaneous situations out and about or in the woods.

From what age do games with rules make sense?

First games with a single condition work from about the age of three. Several simultaneous rules overwhelm many children in their first Kindergarten year. When in doubt, reduce the number of commands, not the pace.

What should I do if a child will not join in?

Asking them to rarely helps. A role with movement in it but no judgement attached works better: signal-giver, keeper of the equipment, referee. From a secure position children often join the game of their own accord.

Are knock-out games really a problem?

Yes, because they remove first the children who would need the most practice. Almost all of them can be repaired: in musical chairs, remove chairs rather than children, until everyone shares the last few seats.

How do movement games support language development?

Concepts are anchored through action: a child who crawls “under the table” while hearing the words stores the preposition twice over. Movement stories, instruction chains and movement songs are therefore among the most effective language-development formats.

Which movement games calm children down?

Quiet movement games such as feather breathing, yoga animals, the hedgehog roll and the statue museum bring arousal down step by step. The transition is what matters: switching abruptly from boisterous play to calm usually creates additional conflict.

Do movement games need special equipment?

No. Newspapers, blankets, ropes, clothes pegs and cardboard boxes cover the greater part of all play ideas. Open-ended materials occupy children longer than ready-made gym apparatus, because they invent the function themselves.

What do I do in bad weather?

Go outside anyway if you can – with the right clothing, rain is no obstacle. If that is not possible, plan three short movement windows of five to eight minutes each indoors, attached to existing fixed points in the day.

Do the same games work in nursery and in Kindergarten?

Most of them do, but not unchanged. Kindergarten classes are larger and mixed across two year groups, nursery groups smaller and younger. Adjust the number of rules and the group size, not the play idea itself.

Conclusion

Movement games in Kindergarten are not an item on the programme to be ticked off. They are the form in which children of this age are most likely to learn – about language, about rules, about other people and about themselves. It is no accident that at this stage the Sports Promotion Ordinance requires not lessons but daily integration.

What you may let go of is the idea that this calls for equipment, training or a free hour in the timetable. The most effective changes are small: leave out a rule so that the youngest child can join in. Put five minutes of movement where there used to be waiting. Rebuild a knock-out game so that nobody sits at the edge. Join in rather than watch.

And if your child spends part of the week outside the family – in the nursery, at playgroup or in Kindergarten – that part is worth looking at just as closely. Ask how much time is spent outdoors, whether children are allowed to climb, and what happens when a child does not want to join in. A setting that understands movement not as a counterbalance but as learning takes a good deal of work off your hands – and a great deal of sitting off your child.

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