Background/Purpose: The Salisbury University (SU) Physical Education Teacher Education Program has offered physical education classes for local homeschooled children since 2001. In fall 2011, the SU Home School Physical Education Program completed a parent survey to discover social and ecological factors (Welk, 1999) that may influence children's physical activity experiences. One of the main findings of this survey was that the majority of parents valued their children's physical activity experience and believed that they support physical activity opportunities. To collect empirical evidence to support the findings, this study examined physical activity patterns among the children.
Method: An activity log was created using the physical activity categories from the ‘ActivityGram' (4th ed., Cooper Institute, 2005). Participants included children age 9-14 (n= 20). The investigator incorporated a 30 min. interval recording strategy to measure daily physical activity behaviors. Participants completed 34 logs from April 19 –May 2, 2012.
Analysis/Results: Physical activity choices were recorded from 7:00 AM to 10:30 PM with 31 blocks of 30 min. interval per a day and 217 blocks per a week. Most participants marked ‘Lifestyle Activity' such as playground and interactive video games as their main source of activity. Only three boys age 10-14 reported ‘Sport Activity' as their main physical activity choices. Furthermore, participants reported that they had none or little experiences in flexibility, aerobic, and muscular activities.
Conclusions: Homeschooled children may not have access to a variety of physical activity opportunities related to learning skills and knowledge in sport and developing health-related fitness.
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