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Benefits of Physical Education Essay

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Benefits of Physical Education in Elementary and Early Childhood Settings
Tracy Linwood
PED 212: Foundation of Movement & Motor Activities
Instructor Carly Davenport
June 6, 2012

Benefits of Physical Education in Elementary and Early Childhood Settings

The need for quality physical education in elementary schools is an important needed foundation for young children to maintain a future healthy lifestyle. The benefits of having physical education in elementary schools are endless. For example, physical education helps fight childhood obesity, lower the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes, and promote active children to be active adults. However, the rhetoric surrounding physical education in these schools are …show more content…

However, they noted that schools without the funds to hire properly trained physical education teachers will have to rely on current staff members to cover the new physical education classes (Borland, 2011). Unfortunately, this becomes a problem in most schools, because teachers feel like there is not enough time to focus on physical education because they are burden by producing test scores also. However, it is not a lost cause. Teachers can implement physical education in their classroom in simple methods of the lesson they are teaching. For example, in math, teachers can have students count their jumps, while they jump up and down, or do jump in jacks when spelling out words. Schools are evaluated on test scores for core curriculums like math, writing, and reading, not body and fitness. Understandably, those subjects are very important as well as physical education.
Research has shown that there are ways to alleviate the budget constraints for physical education. There are four grants in particular to help. One is the Carol M. White Physical Education Program, the main program by the federal government for elementary schools. The grant is given to community organizations that distribute funds to assist schools with their physical education and after school programs. The funds are given to Local Education Agencies, or LEAs, that then distribute money to schools in

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