Parent-Child Exercise Class for Japanese Residents in Germany

2020

WORKSHOP – Parent-Child Exercise Class for Japanese Residents in Germany
in Cooperation with the Japanisher Kindergarten e. V.
(15th February, 2020: Düsseldorf, Germany)

Overview
15th February 2020, 1st Parent-Child Exercise class was held in the Japanishcer Kindergarten e. V.
(Düsseldorf, Germany) with the cooperation of the kindergarten’s physical education teachers
and Takafumi Tomura (the author) as a student from the Tsukuba International Academy for Sport
Studies (TIAS, http://tias.tsukuba.ac.jp/). In total, 80 participants including parents and children
joined in the Parent-Child exercise class learning a variety of physical activities that can be performed
together by parent and child.

Introduction
Japanese community in Dusseldorf is expanding with increasing Japanese residents who mainly camedue to working purpose of the father. There are Japanese primary and secondary school, and Japanese
Kindergarten to provide the educational opportunity based on Japanese educational curriculum forchildren. Japanese Kindergarten e. V. was established in 1983 and has been playing an important
responsibility to develop the physical and mental abilities of preschool children with qualified
teachers from Japan. The school and kindergarten institution is the central facility for Japanese
residents to experience Japanese style physical activity since there is less physical activity
opportunity which conduct in Japanese in the local area. Therefore, Parent-Child exercise class
was opened with the aim to motivate parents to engage in physical activity with their children to
promote a more active lifestyle through the enhancing the awareness of the importance of physicalactivity for children.

Preparation for Parent-Child Exercise ClassFor the preparation of Parent-Child exercise class, the author held deatiled discussions with thephysical education teachers (Syogo Fukumoto, Kentaro Shimizu, and Takatsugu Yasuda) multiple
times to decide the purpose and the contents of physical activity/ies. As a motivation of us teachers tohold the parent-child exercise class, the outcome is to reduce the potential of the deficit of physicaleducation of parents. Futher to motivate parents to increase physical activity time for children toaccelerate motor skill development. The kindergarten conducted a brief investigation of parent’s
physical activity habits and the results indicated that 40% of parents do not perform the amount ofintended physical exercise in a year. Moreover, 37% of the parents perform physical exercise usually
one to three times in a week; however, it can be said that physical activity habits of parents are notenough due to reasons such as living abroad. Based on the result, the author (Takafumi) and PE
teachers came together with a common purpose to hold the parent-child exercise class. Furthermore,PE teachers were concerned about building a relationship with parents, especially with the fathers.
Hence, we considered the parent-child exercise class could be a great chance to communicate withparents within a comfortable atmosphere.
We also considered that the contents of physical activity is an important factor to enrich theexperieces from the parent-child exercise class. Hence, not only discussion was carried out in atheoretical way but we also conducted practicals of the the physical activity in order to finalize the1Parent-Child Exercise Class for Japanese Residents in Germany

2020

plan for Parent-Child exercises. We set a key indicator for the contents of the parent-child exerciseclass as follows: 1) parent and child can play together cheerfully, 2) child can experience a physicalactivity which needs parent’s support, and 3) physical activity which can be done or is available athome or in the neighbourhood.

The Day of the 1st Parent-Child Exercise Class
Fortunately, it was a beautiful day and all participants who applied beforehand could join in the class.
The class was separated into three sections to avoid any issues due to the high population density
during the class.
First section : from 9:30 am to 10:30 am with 27 participants (Parent = 13, Child = 14)
Second section : from 10:45 am to 11:45 am with 27 partcipants (Parent = 13, Child = 14)
Third section : from 12:00 am to 13:00 pm with 26 participants (Parent = 13, Child = 13)
Each section was conducted for 60 minutes including introduction, warming-up, exercise for thephysical release, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (circuit training), expression physicalactivity (colourful balloon), and conclusion (see Table 1, and Figure 1 on the next page).

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2020

Figure 1. The Content of Parent-Child Exercise Class
When the class started, the facial expression of participants was not relaxed, however, we could see
the change in expression among the participants (the young child and the parent alike) as the activities
progressed; and, one could see many smiles and an enjoyable atmosphere during the class. I played
the role of main teacher of the first and second section with Mr. Syogo Fukumoto as the main teacher
for the final (third) section. Physical education teachers encouraged participants to be more active andassisted when they needed help (e.g., when children hesitated to join in the activity).

Children were energetic and enjoyed doing physical activity with the parents. To note, such an
enjoyable and exciting expression and diligent attitude of children was never seen in a normal
kindergarten’s curriculum. Parents also realized the child’s positive feeling toward physical activity,and so they could have a wonderful time with their energetic children.
After the class, we were happy to hear these comments from the participating parents and children:
Parents:“The contents of physical activity in the parent-child exercise class made me tired (fatigued) morethan I thought. But it was so much fun and good for losing weight”.
“I realized that my motor ability has been declining, so I need to perform physical activity more
often in daily life.”
3Parent-Child Exercise Class for Japanese Residents in Germany

2020“It was surprising for me to see the pleasant faces of my children during the physical activity. I want
to try to do such a parent-child activity from now on.”Children:“I was nervous at the beginning, but it was very fun. And I don’t want to finish.”“I could do better motor performance than my father. My father needs to practice more!”
From the class, parents could learn the importance of the physical activity to promote not only theirhealth but also to increase the amount and quality of enjoyable time for their children. Furthermore,
it was a great chance for parents to realize/understand the actual motor condition. Therefore, it canbe said that the 1st Parent-Child Exercise Class could provide Japanese residents the opportunity ofpractical learning through a variety of physical activity and it was a successful event in thekindergarten.

Reflection
After all of the sections were finished, the author and physical education teachers conducted areflection of the 1st Parent-Child Exercise Class. Looking at the positive side, most of the parents andchildren seemed to be satisfied with the contents of physical activity and could move the bodyactively. Most of the parents gave us a positive feedback after the class and answered that they wantto join in any future parent-child exercise program. Furthermore, children also gave us a positive
comment which they want to join the activity again. Physical education teachers were also surprisedat the enjoyable atmosphere during the class and perceived the potential of parent-child exercise toboost the motivation of parent and child to engage in an active lifestyle. Hence, physical educationteachers decided to open the class periodically to provide an opportunity for the parents to see
children’s development practically and to make the parent realize their actual motor ability condition.
Positive reflection from PE teachers:“It was a fantastic time to join in the activity as a teacher and I recognized the value of education.”“Most of parents and children were satisfied with joy after the activity. And we need to hold it again.”“I could communicate with fathers naturally and make a relationship of trust during the class.
Contrast to positive reflection, we found some limitations of the parent-child exercise class; thosewere population density and participant’s limitations. During the preparation phase, we wereconcerned about the population density to avoid any potential incident/accident during the activity,and so the class was separated into three sections. However, we also found some risky situation thatconnects to an accident in the actual situation. Moreover, we offered this event for only parent-child
who attends the kindergarten normally and we did not invite other Japanese residents living in samethe area. However, now we are assured that such a ‘parent-child exercise’ is an effective tool tomotivate parent-child engagement in physical activity. Hence, hence, the kindergarten could
contribute towards social/societal activation by inviting more Japanese residents to join in theprogram/activities. This is our mission to leave the legacy of sports in the Japanese community abroad.

Learning
It was an amazing experience to manage a Parent-Child Exercise class by cooperating with thephysical education teachers at the Japanese Kindergarten e. V (Germany). For one, the author learned
the potential of parent-child exercise to overcome the world-wide discussion in the trend of increasing
inactive children. Furthermore, it was noted that importantly, the physical education teacher/s canbuild a relationship of trust with the parents during the activity, and it connects to creating a
comfortable atmosphere in the normal kindergarten’s curriculum such as the sports festival and theopen class day. While the frequency of physical activity of Japanese parents tends to be low in
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Parent-Child Exercise Class for Japanese Residents in Germany

2020

Germany, parent-child exercise can be one of the powerful instructional methods to promote an activelifestyle of Japanese residents living abroad.
The author is extremely grateful to Syogo Fukumoto, Kentaro Shimizu and Takatsugu Yasuda,and greatly appreciates the Japanischer Kindergarten e. V. for providing this opportunity andspace for conducting the 1st Parent-Child Exercise class in Germany. The author also expresses
his sincere thanks to Prof. Randeep Rakwal (TIAS, Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences,
University of Tsukuba) for the encouragement and guidance towards career-building activities,
research and writing.

2020-07-16

Takafumi TomuraGraduate Student,Tsukuba International Academy for Sport Studies (TIAS),
Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Sciences,
UNIVERSITY OF TSUKUBA,
1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8574, Japan
Email – takafumi3490@gmail.com

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