Promotion of healthy life-style in kindergarten

The theoretical part of this thesis presents a programme entitled Health in Kindergarten, which aims at teaching pre-school children how to live healthy. This programme is primarily focused on preventing illnesses, since a healthy life-style can often help us avoid diseases before they develop. The programme affects the following areas: chronic non-contagious diseases (diet, physical activity), chronic contagious diseases (hygiene, infection prevention, vaccination), injuries and poisoning (safe physical environment and behaviour), mental and emotional health (interpersonal relations, self-image, violence, bad habits, stress). The thesis also explains reasons why the programme was developed, what its main goals and purposes are, areas which it influences, how the programme is performed in kindergarten, the work methods within the programme, what the conditions are for a kindergarten to be accepted in the programme, the connection between kindergarten curriculum and the Health in Kindergarten programme and in the end the thesis presents the promotion of health in Germany. In the empirical part we have carried out a research by using a questionnaire to establish whether there are any differences related to healthy life-style between a kindergarten included in the Health in Kindergarten programme and a kindergarten that is not included in such a programme. Do the kindergarten teachers and teacher assistants in kindergarten included in the programme pay more attention to the principles of a healthy life-style and do they perform more activities connected to health? We have also tried to establish what the teachers’ and teacher assistants’ attitudes towards health are and what their activities within the process of permanent education in the field of healthy life-style are. We used a descriptive method and a non-coincidental chance pattern of kindergarten teachers and teacher assistants from a kindergarten included in the Health in Kindergarten programme and from a kindergarten not included in such a programme. Results showed that there are differences between both kindergartens and that the kindergarten included in the Health in Kindergarten programme follows more principles of healthy life-style