Shannon ChildCare takes great pride in teaching our children about healthy eating, physical exercise and general well-being.

Ensuring that our children are happy, content and their needs are met is of prime importance. A healthy mind enables them to explore and enjoy our wonderful activities and environment. We explain to our children the benefits of physical exercise. Whenever possible we use the outdoor areas within the nurseries, weather permitting. Should the weather prove to be too cold or undesirable we bring the outdoors inside for the children to enjoy i.e. the nursery slide and cars. Being active improves our children’s sleep, maintains their health and weight, develops their muscles and bones, encourages co-ordination and contributes to brain development and learning.

For babies under 12 months, who don’t enjoy being on their tummies, we recommend a minimum of 30 minutes across the day doing Tummy Time. This helps develop their upper body strength, which in turn, aides their fine and gross motor skills as they mature e.g. handwriting.

Our children are physically active during the day, with bouts of purposeful and energetic physical exercise. Keeping children involved and engaged is of precedence at Shannon ChildCare.

Exercise can be in the form of:

• Object play
• Messy play
• Dancing
• Exercises
• Yoga
• Jumping & hopping games
• Indoor and outdoor recreations
• Playing on bikes or scooters
• Climbing
• Using outdoor equipment
• Kicking, throwing & catching a ball
• Obstacle & balancing courses

Each of our nurseries has a variety of outdoor activities and resources, all of which are rotated throughout the week. Our planning encapsulates all the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) guidance with mental well-being and physical exercise at the forefront.