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Active play tips for parents, carers and educators

Your role as an educator

If you’re an educator, you should encourage and plan for the kids in your care to be active every day. Like parents and carers, you’re often seen as a role model, so whenever possible, join in with the activities you plan for the children.

To keep your students interested and engaged with their activities, plan a wide variety of structured and unstructured opportunities for active play, and then mix things up by rotating the program every couple of days.

If you keep a record of these activities, you can develop your own active play resource folder. This can be particularly useful for new staff.

Your role as a parent or carer

Whether you’re a parent or a carer, you’re a role model for your kids. It's great to show the kids around you how to be active every day.

If you keep play items – like blow-up beach balls, soccer balls, bats, buckets and spades – in your car and at home, it'll be easier to create regular, spur-of-the-moment opportunities for active play. If you get the opportunity you could plan activities for all the family to be together. Other carers and family members – such as grandparents – often love to be involved. Sharing the fun and responsibility of planning activities can make life easier for you. So it’s a win/win situation!

Nature Play CBR

Nature Play CBR is about getting more children outdoors more often so they can reap the benefits of unstructured playing, learning and being physically active. Children need nature play for their physical and mental health, for their cognitive and emotional development, and because they have a right to run, climb, build, get dirty, and imagine the world for themselves through play. For ideas and inspiration on things to do in the great outdoors visit Nature Play CBR.

Meet & Move

Meet & Move supports parents and carers of young children (aged birth - 5 years) to increase their health and wellbeing through shared physical activity and play.

Our aim is to help families find new ways to move together, to get outdoors and have fun playing. The program is an initiative of the Bluearth Foundation run in partnership with Mums Exercise Group Australia (MEGA) - Canberra and Nutrition Australia (ACT), and supported by the ACT Government under the ACT Health Promotion Grants Program. For ideas on how to bring more movement and active play into your family life go to the Facebook group Meet and Move or visit the Bluearth website.

Meet and move
Page last updated on: 17 Sep 2019