This story about active childcare was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

This report has simple advice for child care teachers: If you want children to be more active during the day, play along with them.

A federally-commissioned study of child care centers found that staff should spend more time letting children be physically active. But the study also found that when staff members played with the children, children spent more time being active than when the adults did not participate. Children in classrooms where adults didn’t join in the play had 30 minutes less active time, on average, than children in classrooms where adults got involved.

Active child care workers lead to active toddlers (hechingerreport.org)