Music and Movement for Young Children’s Healthy Development

Upon entering his preschool classroom and hearing mu-sic, Elijah began bouncing up and down in place and said, “This is how we dance at home! ” Nathan joined in with his break dancing. Soon, everyone in the classroom started to dance to the music, including the teachers. Young children enjoy moving around when they hear music. Children take pleasure in physical activities that contribute to their healthy development. Physical activities are vital to retain healthy bodies, and inactivity is one cause of obesity in young children (Dow, 2010; Izumi-Taylor & Morris, 2007). This article describes how teachers and families can support young children’s healthy development by engaging together in joyful and fun activities related to music and movement, which in turn, can help fight children’s obesity. Importance of Physical Activity In today’s mechanized society, children’s lives are much more sedentary than those of their parents and grandpar-ents (Pica, 2010; Stewart & Phillips, 1992). Several fac-tors contribute to the decrease in children’s physical ac-tivities, such as hurried adult schedules, societal changes including consumption of fatty foods and larger portion sizes, development of technology that makes daily living less physical (Anderson & Butcher, 2006), increases in academic pressures, and a decrease in safe outdoor play spaces (Rogers & Taylor, 1999). Children rarely experi-ence enough outdoor play and spend a great deal of time playing indoors with computer games or watching televi-sion (Anderson & Butcher, 2006; Caprio, 2006). All of these factors contribute to their risk for obesity. Childhood obesity is now recognized not only as a major health problem in the United States, but also as a national epidemic (Caprio, 2006; Sorte & Daeschel, 2006). The rate of obesity is rapidly increasing even among babies and toddlers. Factors that may predispose children to obesity sometimes begin to affect children within their first 3 years of life (Lumeng, 2009). Children who are obese are at risk for some of the same health conditions as obese adolescents and adults: • diabetes 2, • liver disease, • high cholesterol, and • high blood pressure, all of which are risk factors that contribute to heart dis