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A growing body of literature has confirmed the health benefits of regular physical activity in school-aged youth. However, less systematic attention has been directed toward establishing activity profiles and evaluating the impact of community-based interventions designed to increase physical activity and reduce sedentary behavior in preschool children. In this paper, current findings are reviewed to determine whether preschoolers are achieving sufficient levels of structured and unstructured physical activity and to identify potential correlates of activity and sedentary behavior in the young child. In addition, promotion of physical activity among preschool-aged children in selected community settings is discussed and future research initiatives are highlighted. Given current trends in the overweight and obesity status of children aged two to five years, efforts aimed at increasing physical activity levels and documenting gains in health-related fitness and movement skillfulness in this pediatric population should be accelerated.

One mission of physical education (PE) is the promotion of enjoyable physical activity participation. PE enjoyment of 414 elementary school students (51% male, 77% Caucasian) was examined in a 3-year prospective study. Analyzed using Generalized Estimating Equations, PE enjoyment decreased significantly from the fourth to sixth grade (p < .001) and was lower among girls (p < .001) and students not in organized sports (p < .005). Ethnicity and body mass index were not significant predictors of PE enjoyment. Girls, older children, and those not on sports teams are especially dependent on PE as the setting for accruing health-related physical activity, and strategies are needed to enhance their PE enjoyment.

Although there is strong and consistent evidence that childhood and adolescent physical activity is osteogenic, the evidence concerning its sustained effects to adult bone health is not conclusive. Therefore the value of interventions, in addition to beneficial bone adaptation, could be exposure to activities children enjoy and therefore continue. As such, interventions should provide skills, pleasure, and supportive environments to ensure continued bone-strengthening physical activity with age. Until the dose-response as well as timing of physical activity to bone health is more fully understood, it is sensible to assume that physical activity is needed throughout the lifespan to improve and maintain skeletal health. Current federal guidelines for health-related physical activity, which explicitly recommend bone-strengthening physical activities for youth, should also apply to adults.

Boys are typically more physically active than girls, but schools have the potential to promote health-related physical activity for all children. This study investigated gender differences in children’s physical activity levels during physical education (PE) classes and unstructured recess periods. The activity levels of 91 fifth-grade children were assessed by accelerometer (Caltrac) on 3 days. Results indicated that children’s activity levels were low to moderately stable from day to day in both environments. Boys and girls had similar activity levels during PE, t(89) = 1.49, p = .140, but boys were significantly more active than girls during recess, t(89) = 3.27, p = .002. Girls were significantly more active during PE than they were at recess, t(51) = 2.08, p = .043. The results suggest that structured PE classes may provide similar amounts of physical activity for both genders.

Children and adolescents with intellectual disability (ID) exhibit a mixture of cognitive, motor, and psychosocial limitation. Identifying specific inadequacies in motor proficiency in youth with ID would improve therapeutic management to enhance functional capacity and health-related physical activity. The purpose of this study was to initiate descriptive data collection of gross motor skills of youth with ID and compare those skills with competency norms. The Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency (BOT-2) was used to measure 6 items for balance (BAL), 5 items for upper limb coordination (ULC), and 6 items for bilateral coordination (BLC) of 123 males (ages 8–18) with ID but without Down syndrome. The authors performed 2,840 assessments (10–32 for each item); 944, 985, and 913 for BAL, ULC, and BLC, respectively. Mean scores for all age groups for BAL, ULC, and BLC were consistently below BOT-2 criteria. Overall motor skills of males with ID are below the competence expected for children and adolescents without disabilities.