PARTICIPATION IN PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES OF CHILDREN INVOLVED IN PRESCHOOL PROGRAMS

This paper is focused on the children participation in physical activities within early childhood and preschool programs they are attending in kindergartens. The purpose of this paper is to examine perception of preschool teachers about importance of physical activities of children as well as their perception about how prepared they are for their implementation. Participants in the research were preschool teachers employed in kindergartens in town Sesvete. There has been 66 preschool teachers involved in the research. Most of the respondents perceive physical activities as very important for preschool children and most of them believe that they have developed all required competences for conducting physical activities in their work. Meanwhile, only one third of respondents conduct physical activities on daily basis with children. According to the results, some kindergartens do not have appropriate gym for conducting physical activities. Since physical development of the children is one of the main fields of Croatian early childhood care and preschool education curricula, it is important to educate preschool teachers about positive effects of including preschool children in daily physical activities as well as introduce them with different methods of how these type of activities can be conducted.